John 11:17

The matter being determined, that Christ will go to Judea, and his disciples with him, they address themselves to their journey; in this journey some circumstances happened which the other evangelists record, as the healing of the blind man at Jericho, and the conversion of Zaccheus. We must not reckon ourselves out of our way, while we are in the way of doing good; nor be so intent upon one good office as to neglect another.

At length, he comes near to Bethany, which is said to be about fifteen furlongs from Jerusalem, about two measured miles, Joh 11:18. Notice is taken of this, that this miracle was in effect wrought in Jerusalem, and so was put to her score. Christ's miracles in Galilee were more numerous, but those in or near Jerusalem were more illustrious; there he healed one that had been diseased thirty-eight years, another that had been blind from his birth, and raised one that had been dead four days. To Bethany Christ came, and observe,

I. What posture he found his friends there in. When he had been last with them it is probable that he left them well, in health and joy; but when we part from our friends (though Christ knew) we know not what changes may affect us or them before we meet again.

1. He found his friend Lazarus in the grave, Joh 11:17. When he came near the town, probably by the burying-place belonging to the town, he was told by the neighbours, or some persons whom he met, that Lazarus had been four days buried. Some think that Lazarus died the same day that the messenger came to Jesus with the tidings of his sickness, and so reckon two days for his abode in the same place and two days for his journey. I rather think that Lazarus died at the very instant that Jesus, "Our friend sleepeth, he is now newly fallen asleep;" and that the time between his death and burial (which among the Jews was but short), with the four days of his lying in the grave, was taken up in this journey; for Christ travelled publicly, as appears by his passing through Jericho, and his abode at Zaccheus's house took up some time. Promised salvations, though they always come surely, yet often come slowly.

2. He found his friends that survived in grief. Martha and Mary were almost swallowed up with sorrow for the death of their brother, which is intimated where it is said that many of the Jews came to Martha and Mary to comfort them. Note, (1.) Ordinarily, where death is there are mourners, especially when those that were agreeable and amiable to their relations, and serviceable to their generation, are taken away. The house where death is called the house of mourning, Ecc 7:2. When man goes to his long home the mourners go about the streets (Ecc 12:5), or rather sit alone, and keep silence. Here was Martha's house, a house where the fear of God was, and on which his blessing rested, yet made a house of mourning. Grace will keep sorrow from the heart (Joh 14:1), not from the house. (2.) Where there are mourners there ought to be comforters. It is a duty we owe to those that are in sorrow to mourn with them, and to comfort them; and our mourning with them will be some comfort to them. When we are under the present impressions of grief, we are apt to forget those things which would minister comfort to us, and therefore have need of remembrancers. It is a mercy to have remembrancers when we are in sorrow, and our duty to be remembrancers to those who are in sorrow. The Jewish doctors laid great stress upon this, obliging their disciples to make conscience of comforting the mourners after the burial of the dead. They comforted them concerning their brother, that is, by speaking to them of him, not only of the good name he left behind, but of the happy state he was gone to. When godly relations and friends are taken from us, whatever occasion we have to be afflicted concerning ourselves, who are left behind and miss them, we have reason to be comforted concerning those who are gone before us to a happiness where they have no need of us. This visit which the Jews made to Martha and Mary is an evidence that they were persons of distinction, and made a figure; as also that they behaved obligingly to all; so that though they were followers of Christ, yet those who had no respect for him were civil to them. There was also a providence in it, that so many Jews, Jewish ladies it is probable, should come together, just at this time, to comfort the mourners, that they might be unexceptionable witnesses of the miracle, and see what miserable comforters they were, in comparison with Christ. Christ did not usually send for witnesses to his miracles, and yet had none been by but relations this would have been excepted against; therefore God's counsel so ordered it that these should come together accidentally, to bear their testimony to it, that infidelity might stop her mouth.

II. What passed between him and his surviving friends at this interview. When Christ defers his visits for a time they are thereby made the more acceptable, much the more welcome; so it was here. His departures endear his returns, and his absence teaches us how to value his presence. We have here,

1. The interview between Christ and Martha.

(1.) We are told that she went and met him, Joh 11:20. [1.] It should seem that Martha was earnestly expecting Christ's arrival, and enquiring for it. Either she had sent out messengers, to bring her tidings of his first approach, or she had often asked, Saw you him whom my soul loveth? so that the first who discovered him ran to her with the welcome news. However it was, she heard of his coming before he arrived. She had waited long, and often asked, Is he come? and could hear no tidings of him; but long-looked-for came at last. At the end the vision will speak, and not lie. [2.] Martha, when the good news was brought that Jesus was coming, threw all aside, and went and met him, in token of a most affectionate welcome. She waived all ceremony and compliment to the Jews who came to visit her, and hastened to go and meet Jesus. Note, When God by his grace or providence is coming towards us in ways of mercy and comfort, we should go forth by faith, hope, and prayer to meet him. Some suggest that Martha went out of the town to meet Jesus, to let him know that there were several Jews in the house, who were no friends to him, that if he pleased he might keep out of the way of them. [3.] When Martha went to meet Jesus, Mary sat still in the house. Some think she did not hear the tidings, being in her drawing-room, receiving visits of condolence, while Martha who was busied in the household-affairs had early notice of it. Perhaps Martha would not tell her sister that Christ was coming, being ambitious of the honour of receiving him first. Sancta est prudentia clam fratribus clam parentibus ad Christum esse conferre - Holy prudence conducts us to Christ, while brethren and parents know not what we are doing. - Maldonat. in locum. Others think she did hear that Christ was come, but was so overwhelmed with sorrow that she did not care to stir, choosing rather to indulge her sorrow, and to sit poring upon her affliction, and saying, I do well to mourn. Comparing this story with that in Luk 10:38, etc., we may observe the different tempers of these two sisters, and the temptations and advantages of each. Martha's natural temper was active and busy; she loved to be here and there, and at the end of every thing; and this had been a snare to her when by it she was not only careful and cumbered about many things, but hindered from the exercises of devotion: but now in a day of affliction this active temper did her a kindness, kept the grief from her heart, and made her forward to meet Christ, and so she received comfort from him the sooner. On the other hand, Mary's natural temper was contemplative and reserved. This had been formerly an advantage to her, when it placed her Christ's feet, to hear his word, and enabled her there to attend upon him without those distractions with which Martha was cumbered; but now in the day of affliction that same temper proved a snare to her, made her less able to grapple with her grief, and disposed her to melancholy: But Mary sat still in the house. See here how much it will be our wisdom carefully to watch against the temptations, and improve the advantages, of our natural temper.

(2.) Here is fully related the discourse between Christ and Martha.

[1.] Martha's address to Christ, Joh 11:21, Joh 11:22.

First, She complains of Christ's long absence and delay. She said it, not only with grief for the death of her brother, but with some resentment of the seeming unkindness of the Master: Lord if you hadst been here, my brother had not died. Here is, 1. Some evidence of faith. She believed Christ's power, that, though her brother's sickness was very grievous, yet he could have cured it, and so have prevented his death. She believed his pity, that if he had but seen Lazarus in his extreme illness, and his dear relations all in tears about him, he would have had compassion, and have prevented so sad a breach, for his compassions fail not. But, 2. Here are sad instances of unbelief. Her faith was true, but weak as a bruised reed, for she limits the power of Christ, in saying, If thou hadst been here; whereas she ought to have known that Christ could cure at a distance, and that his gracious operations were not limited to his bodily presence. She reflects likewise upon the wisdom and kindness of Christ, that he did not hasten to them when they sent for him, as if he had not timed his business well, and now might as well have staid away, and not have come at all, as to come too late; and, as for any help now, she can scarcely entertain the thought of it.

Secondly, Yet she corrects and comforts herself with the thoughts of the prevailing interest Christ had in heaven; at least, she blames herself for blaming her Master, and for suggesting that he comes too late: for I know that even now, desperate as the case is, whatsoever thou wilt ask of God, God will give it to thee. Observe, 1. How willing her hope was. Though she had not courage to ask of Jesus that he should raise him to life again, there having been no precedent as yet of any one raised to life that had been so long dead, yet, like a modest petitioner, she humbly recommends the case to the wise and compassionate consideration of the Lord Jesus. When we know not what in particular to ask or expect, let us in general refer ourselves to God, let him do as seemeth him good. Judicii tui est, non praesumptionis meae - I leave it to thy judgment, not to my presumption. - Aug. in locum. When we know not what to pray for, it is our comfort that the great Intercessor knows what to ask for us, and is always heard. 2. How weak her faith was. She should have said, "Lord, thou canst do whatsoever thou wilt;" but she only says, "Thou canst obtain whatsoever thou prayest for." She had forgotten that the Son had life in himself, that he wrought miracles by his own power. Yet both these considerations must be taken in for the encouragement of our faith and hope, and neither excluded: the dominion Christ has on earth and his interest and intercession in heaven. He has in the one hand the golden sceptre, and in the other the golden censer; his power is always predominant, his intercession always prevalent.

[2.] The comfortable word which Christ gave to Martha, in an answer to her pathetic address (Joh 11:23): Jesus saith unto her, Thy brother shall rise again. Martha, in her complaint, looked back, reflecting with regret that Christ was not there, for then, thinks she, my brother had been now alive. We are apt, in such cases, to add to our own trouble, by fancying what might have been. "If such a method had been taken, such a physician employed, my friend had not died;" which is more than we know: but what good does this do? When God's will is done, our business is to submit to him. Christ directs Martha, and us in her, to look forward, and to think what shall be, for that is a certainty, and yields sure comfort: Thy brother shall rise again. First, This was true of Lazarus in a sense peculiar to him: he was now presently to be raised; but Christ speaks of it in general as a thing to be done, not which he himself would do, so humbly did our Lord Jesus speak of what he did. He also expresses it ambiguously, leaving her uncertain at first whether he would raise him presently or not till the last day, that he might try her faith and patience. Secondly, It is applicable to all the saints, and their resurrection at the last day. Note, It is a matter of comfort to us, when we have buried our godly friends and relations, to think that they shall rise again. As the soul at death is not lost, but gone before, so the body is not lost, but laid up. Think you hear Christ saying, "Thy parent, thy child, thy yoke-fellow, shall rise again; these dry bones shall live."

[3.] The faith which Martha mixed with this word, and the unbelief mixed with this faith, Joh 11:24.

First, She accounts it a faithful saying that he shall rise again at the last day. Though the doctrine of the resurrection was to have its full proof from Christ's resurrection, yet, as it was already revealed, she firmly believed it, Act 24:15. 1. That there shall be a last day, with which all the days of time shall be numbered and finished. 2. That there shall be a general resurrection at that day, when the earth and sea shall give up their dead. 3. That there shall be a particular resurrection of each one: "I know that I shall rise again, and this and the other relation that was dear to me." As bone shall return to his bone in that day, so friend to his friend.

Secondly, Yet she seems to think this saying not so well worthy of all acceptation as really it was: "I know he shall rise again at the last day; but what are we the better for that now?" As if the comforts of the resurrection to eternal life were not worth speaking of, or yielded not satisfaction sufficient to balance her affliction. See our weakness and folly, that we suffer present sensible things to make a deeper impression upon us, both of grief and joy, than those things which are the objects of faith. I know that he shall rise again at the last day; and is not this enough? She seems to think it is not. Thus, by our discontent under present crosses, we greatly undervalue our future hopes, and put a slight upon them, as if not worth regarding.

[4.] The further instruction and encouragement which Jesus Christ gave her; for he will not quench the smoking flax nor break the bruised reed. He said to her, I am the resurrection and the life, Joh 11:25, Joh 11:26. Two things Christ possesses her with the belief of, in reference to the present distress; and they are the things which our faith should fasten upon in the like cases.

First, The power of Christ, his sovereign power: I am the resurrection and the life, the fountain of life, and the head and author of the resurrection. Martha believed that at his prayer God would give any thing, but he would have her know that by his word he could work anything. Martha believed a resurrection at the last day; Christ tells her that he had that power lodged in his own hand, that the dead were to hear his voice (Joh 5:25), whence it was easy to infer, He that could raise a world of men that had been dead many ages could doubtless raise one man that had been dead but four days. Note, It is an unspeakable comfort to all good Christians that Jesus Christ is the resurrection and the life, and will be so to them. Resurrection is a return to life; Christ is the author of that return, and of that life to which it is a return. We look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come, and Christ is both; the author and principle of both, and the ground of our hope of both.

Secondly, The promises of the new covenant, which give us further ground of hope that we shall live. Observe,

a. To whom these promises are made - to those that believe in Jesus Christ, to those that consent to, and confide in, Jesus Christ as the only Mediator of reconciliation and communion between God and man, that receive the record God has given in his word concerning his Son, sincerely comply with it, and answer all the great intentions of it. The condition of the latter promise is thus expressed: Whosoever liveth and believeth in me, which may be understood, either, (a.) Of natural life: Whosoever lives in this world, whether he be Jew or Gentile, wherever he lives, if he believe in Christ, he shall live by him. Yet it limits the time: Whoever during life, while he is here in this state of probation, believes in me, shall be happy in me, but after death it will be too late. Whoever lives and believes, that is, lives by faith (Gal 2:20), has a faith that influences his conversation. Or, (b.) Of spiritual life: He that lives and believes is he that by faith is born again to a heavenly and divine life, to whom to live is Christ - that makes Christ the life of his soul.

b. What the promises are (Joh 11:25): Though he die, yet shall he live, nay, he shall never die, Joh 11:26. Man consists of body and soul, and provision is made for the happiness of both.

(a.) For the body; here is the promise of a blessed resurrection. Though the body be dead because of sin (there is no remedy but it will die), yet it shall live again. All the difficulties that attend the state of the dead are here overlooked, and made nothing of. Though the sentence of death was just, though the effects of death be dismal, though the bands of death be strong, though he be dead and buried, dead and putrefied, though the scattered dust be so mixed with common dust that no art of man can distinguish, much less separate them, put the case as strongly as you will on that side, yet we are sure that he shall live again: the body shall be raised a glorious body.

(b.) For the soul; here is the promise of a blessed immortality. He that liveth and believeth, who, being united to Christ by faith, lives spiritually by virtue of that union, he shall never die. That spiritual life shall never be extinguished, but perfected in eternal life. As the soul, being in its nature spiritual, is therefore immortal; so if by faith it live a spiritual life, consonant to its nature, its felicity shall be immortal too. It shall never die, shall never be otherwise than easy and happy, and there is not any intermission or interruption of its life, as there is of the life of the body. The mortality of the body shall at length be swallowed up of life; but the life of the soul, the believing soul, shall be immediately at death swallowed up of immortality. He shall not die, eis ton aiōna, for ever - Non morietur in aeternum; so Cyprian quotes it. The body shall not be for ever dead in the grave; it dies (like the two witnesses) but for a time, times, and the dividing of time; and when time shall be no more, and all the divisions of it shall be numbered and finished, a spirit of life from God shall enter into it. But this is not all; the souls shall not die that death which is for ever, shall not die eternally, Blessed and holy, that is, blessed and happy, is he that by faith has part in the first resurrection, has part in Christ, who is that resurrection; for on such the second death, which is a death for ever, shall have no power; see Joh 6:40. Christ asks her, "Believest thou this? Canst thou assent to it with application? Canst thou take my word for it?" Note, When we have read or heard the word of Christ, concerning the great things of the other world, we should seriously put it to ourselves, "Do we believe this, this truth in particular, this which is attended with so many difficulties, this which is suited to my case? Does my belief of it realize it to me, and give my soul an assurance of it, so that I can say not only this I believe, but thus I believe it?" Martha was doting upon her brother's being raised in this world; before Christ gave her hopes of this, he directed her thoughts to another life, another world: "No matter for that, but believest thou this that I tell thee concerning the future state?" The crosses and comforts of this present time would not make such an impression upon us as they do if we did but believe the things of eternity as we ought.

[5.] Martha's unfeigned assent yielded to what Christ said, Joh 11:27. We have here Martha's creed, the good confession she witnessed, the same with that for which Peter was commended (Mat 16:16, Mat 16:17), and it is the conclusion of the whole matter.

First, Here is the guide of her faith, and that is the word of Christ; without any alteration, exception, or proviso, she takes it entire as Christ had said it: Yea, Lord, whereby she subscribes to the truth of all and every part of that which Christ had promised, in his own sense: Even so. Faith is an echo to divine revelation, returns the same words, and resolves to abide by them: Yea, Lord, As the word did make it so I believe and take it, said queen Elizabeth.

Secondly, The ground of her faith, and that is the authority of Christ; she believes this because she believes that he who saith it is Christ. She has recourse to the foundation for the support of the superstructure. I believe, pepisteuka, "I have believed that thou art Christ, and therefore I do believe this." Observe here,

a. What she believed and confessed concerning Jesus; three things, all to the same effect: - (a.) That he was the Christ, or Messiah, promised and expected under this name and notion, the anointed one. (b.) That he was the Son of God; so the Messiah was called (Psa 2:7), not by office only, but by nature. (c.) That it was he who should come into the world, the ho erchomenos. That blessing of blessings which the church had for so many ages waited for as future, she embraced as present.

b. What she inferred hence, and what she alleged this for. If she admits this, that Jesus is the Christ, there is no difficulty in believing that he is the resurrection and the life; for if he be the Christ, then, (a.) He is the fountain of light and truth, and we may take all his sayings for faithful and divine, upon his own word. If he be the Christ, he is that prophet whom we are to hear in all things. (b.) He is the fountain of life and blessedness, and we may therefore depend upon his ability as well as upon his veracity. How shall bodies, turned to dust, live again? How shall souls, clogged and clouded as ours are, live for ever? We could not believe this, but that we believe him that undertakes it to be the Son of God, who has life in himself, and has it for us.

2. The interview between Christ and Mary the other sister. And here observe,

(1.) The notice which Martha gave her of Christ's coming (Joh 11:28): When she had so said, as one that needed to say no more, she went her way, easy in her mind, and called Mary her sister. [1.] Martha, having received instruction and comfort from Christ herself, called her sister to share with her. Time was when Martha would have drawn Mary from Christ, to come and help her in much serving (Luk 10:40); but, to make her amends for this, here she is industrious to draw her to Christ. [2.] She called her secretly, and whispered it in her ear, because there was company by, Jews, who were no friends to Christ. The saints are called into the fellowship of Jesus Christ by an invitation that is secret and distinguishing, given to them and not to others; they have meat to eat that the world knows not of, joy that a stranger does not intermeddle with. [3.] She called her by order from Christ; he bade her go call her sister. This call that is effectual, whoever brings it, is sent by Christ. The Master is come, and calleth for thee. First, She calls Christ the Master, didaskalos, a teaching master; by that title he was commonly called and known among them. Mr. George Herbert took pleasure in calling Christ, my Master. Secondly, She triumphs in his arrival: The Master is come. He whom we have long wished and waited for, he is come, he is come; this was the best cordial in the present distress. "Lazarus is gone, and our comfort in him is gone; but the Master is come, who is better than the dearest friend, and has that in him which will abundantly make up all our losses. He is come who is our teacher, who will teach us how to get good by our sorrow (Psa 94:12), who will teach, and so comfort." Thirdly, She invites her sister to go and meet him: "He calls for thee, enquires what is become of thee, and would have thee sent for." Note, When Christ our Master comes, he calls for us. He comes in his word and ordinances, calls us to them, calls us by them, calls us to himself. He calls for thee in particular, for thee by name (Psa 27:8); and, if he call thee, he will cure thee, he will comfort thee.

(2.) The haste which Mary made to Christ upon this notice given her (Joh 11:29): As soon as she heard this good news, that the Master was come, she arose quickly, and came to him. She little thought how near he was to her, for he is often nearer to them that mourn in Zion than they are aware of; but, when she knew how near he was, she started up, and in a transport of joy ran to meet him. The least intimation of Christ's gracious approaches is enough to a lively faith, which stands ready to take the hint, and answer the first call. When Christ was come, [1.] She did not consult the decorum of her mourning, but, forgetting ceremony, and the common usage in such cases, she ran through the town, to meet Christ. Let no nice punctilios of decency and honour deprive us at any time of opportunities of conversing with Christ. [2.] She did not consult her neighbours, the Jews that were with her, comforting her; she left them all, to come to him, and did not only not ask their advice, but not so much as ask their leave, or beg their pardon for her rudeness.

(3.) We are told (Joh 11:30) where she found the Master; he was not yet come into Bethany, but was at the town's end, in that place where Martha met him. See here, [1.] Christ's love to his work. He staid near the place where the grave was, that he might be ready to go to it. He would not go into the town, to refresh himself after the fatigue of his journey, till he had done the work he came to do; nor would he go into the town, lest it should look like ostentation, and a design to levy a crowd to be spectators of the miracle. [2.] Mary's love to Christ; still she loved much. Though Christ had seemed unkind in his delays, yet she could take nothing amiss from him. Let us go thus to Christ without the camp, Heb 13:13.

(4.) The misconstruction which the Jews that were with Mary made of her going away so hastily (Joh 11:31): They said, She goes to the grave, to weep there. Martha bore up better under this affliction than Mary did, who was a woman of a tender and sorrowful spirit; such was her natural temper. Those that are so have need to watch against melancholy, and ought to be pitied and helped. These comforters found that their formalities did her no service, but that she hardened herself in sorrow: and therefore concluded when she went out, and turned that way, it was to go to the grave and weep there. See, [1.] What often is the folly and fault of mourners; they contrive how to aggravate their own grief, and to make bad worse. We are apt in such cases to take a strange pleasure in our own pain, and to say, We do well to be passionate in our grief, even unto death; we are apt to fasten upon those things that aggravate the affliction, and what good does this do us, when it is our duty to reconcile ourselves to the will of God in it? Why should mourners go to the grave to weep there, when they sorrow not as those that have no hope? Affliction of itself is grievous; why should we make it more so? [2.] What is the wisdom and duty of comforters; and that is, to prevent as much as may be, in those who grieve inordinately, the revival of the sorrow, and to divert it. Those Jews that followed Mary were thereby led to Christ, and became the witnesses of one of his most glorious miracles. It is good cleaving to Christ's friends in their sorrows, for thereby we may come to know him better.

(5.) Mary's address to our Lord Jesus (Joh 11:32): She came, attended with her train of comforters, and fell down at his feet, as one overwhelmed with a passionate sorrow, and said with many tears (as appears Joh 11:33), Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died, as Martha said before, for they had often said it to one another. Now here, [1.] Her posture is very humble and submissive: She fell down at his feet, which was more than Martha did, who had a greater command of her passions. She fell down not as a sinking mourner, but fell down at his feet as a humble petitioner. This Mary had sat at Christ's feet to hear his word (Luk 10:39), and here we find her there on another errand. Note, Those that in a day of peace place themselves at Christ's feet, to receive instructions from him, may with comfort and confidence in a day of trouble cast themselves at his feet with hope to find favour with him. She fell at his feet, as one submitting to his will in what was done, and referring herself to his good-will in what was now to be done. When we are in affliction we must cast ourselves at Christ's feet in a penitent sorrow and self-abasement for sin, and a patient resignation of ourselves to the divine disposal. Mary's casting herself at Christ's feet was in token of the profound respect and veneration she had for him. Thus subjects were wont to give honour to their kings and princes; but, our Lord Jesus not appearing in secular glory as an earthly prince, those who by this posture of adoration gave honour to him certainly looked upon him as more than man, and intended hereby to give him divine honour. Mary hereby made profession of the Christian faith as truly as Martha did, and in effect said, I believe that thou art the Christ; bowing the knee to Christ, and confessing him with the tongue, are put together as equivalent, Rom 14:11; Phi 2:10, Phi 2:11. This she did in presence of the Jews that attended her, who, though friends to her and her family, yet were bitter enemies to Christ; yet in their sight she fell at Christ's feet, as one that was neither ashamed to own the veneration she had for Christ nor afraid of disobliging her friends and neighbours by it. Let them resent it as they pleased, she falls at his feet; and, if this be to be vile, she will be yet more vile; see Sol 8:1. We serve a Master of whom we have no reason to be ashamed, and whose acceptance of our services is sufficient to balance the reproach of men and all their revilings. [2.] Her address is very pathetic: Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died. Christ's delay was designed for the best, and proved so; yet both the sisters very indecently cast the same in his teeth, and in effect charge him with the death of their brother. This repeated challenge he might justly have resented, might have told them he had something else to do than to be at their beck and to attend them; he must come when his business would permit him: but not a word of this; he considered the circumstances of their affliction, and that losers think they may have leave to speak, and therefore overlooked the rudeness of this welcome, and gave us an example of mildness and meekness in such cases. Mary added no more, as Martha did; but it appears, by what follows, that what she fell short in words she made up in tears; she said less than Martha, but wept more; and tears of devout affection have a voice, a loud prevailing voice, in the ears of Christ; no rhetoric like this.

Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Joh_11:17-27

When Jesus came

Christs help is sure, if delayed

He usually reserves His hand for a dead lift.

When our faith begins to flag, and hang the wing when our strength is gone, and we have given up all for lost, Now will I arise, saith the Lord, now will I be exalted, now will I lift up Myself (Isa_33:10). (J. Trapp.)

The journey

Leaving His retreat beyond Jordan, Jesus calmly makes His way to the village of Bethany. We shall find it shown in the issue that, as regards the manifestation of the glory of God, the leading of the disciples into higher faith, and the discipline and blessing of the sisters, the Lords arrival is neither too early nor too late; but that it is as when separate trains move along separate lines of railway, timed to meet by a certain hour, at a certain junction, there to be combined. The distance to Bethany was a long days journey. Whether He made the journey in a single day we have no means of knowing. The earliest part of it would lie along some fertile glen of Gilead, and would be pursued amid morning songs from every side. Crossing the Jordan at a neighbouring ford, the next part of the journey would lie in the rich plain of Jericho, beautiful as a great pleasure ground, with bosks and groves of aromatic shrubs. Then He would pursue the wild dreary road that goes up from Jericho to Jerusalem, lying through a desolate rocky district, often winding along the edge of cliffs and frightful precipices, one of the wildest and gloomiest roads in the land. As He approaches Bethany, the dust of travel whitening His sandals, and as weary, it may be, as when He came to Jacobs well at noon, He is told that Lazarus has already been four days in the grave. (J. Culross.)

Many of the Jews had come … to console them

Oriental consolers

According to the ancient Jewish ritual, those who came to condole with the mourners had to return with them from the grave to the house, there to station themselves in a circle around the mourners, repeating prayers, and offering consolation. The rule was that this circle of consolers should consist of not less than ten persons; but it usually consisted of many more. In token of grief, the couches upon which the mourners and the consolers sat were lowered so as to come nearer to the ground, or else all sat upon the ground. The consolers remained with the mourners during the days of mourning; but there was a certain defence from this publicity in the fact that the consoler had no right to speak until the mourner spoke; and the mourner had the privilege further of indicating, by nodding, that he was now comforted and that the consolers need not continue to sit around him any longer. (S. S. Times.)

The interview with Martha

I. MARTHAS REGRETFUL LAMENTATION; or faith struggling with imperfect knowledge (Joh_11:21). The language neither of reproach nor complaint, but.

1. Of deep sorrow that Christ had not been present, at least, before the end came.

2. Of sincere faith, since she believed that had He been present, He would have healed him, or entreated God on his behalf.

3. Of imperfect knowledge

(1) Allied to superstition in thinking Christs presence needful (cf. chap. 4:47)

.

(2) Akin to over confidence in asserting that Lazarus would have lived had Christ not been absent.

II. MARTHAS CONFIDENT PERSUASION; or faith rising into ardent hope (Joh_11:22).

1. Faiths firm assurance. That Christs access to the Father on behalf of men is

(1) Immediate, at any moment.

(2) Direct, by simply asking.

(3) Unlimited, all things.

(4) Efficacious, certain to prevail.

2. Faiths joyous expectation. That nothing will prove too great.

(1) For Christs love to devise, or

(2) Christs power to execute on behalf of His people Eph_3:20-21)--hence that a resurrection is neither impossible nor absurd.

III. MARTHAS DESPONDING ADMISSION; or faith relapsing into doubt (verse 24).

1. Her disappointment. She had expected Christ to speak about an immediate restoration of her dead brother, whereas He only seemed to hint at a far away resurrection (verse 23).

2. Her concession. She acknowledges, notwithstanding, such a resurrection, and consequently Lazaruss continued existence.

IV. MARTHAS SUBLIME CONFESSION; or faith soaring into lofty adoration (verse 27). That which lifted her beyond the atmosphere of doubt was Christs exposition of the doctrine (verses 25, 26), in which were set forth

1. That the resurrection was not an event to be thought of as distinct from the life, but as a manifestation of the life.

2. That the resurrection and the life, as thus explained, have their primal source in Himself, in whom is life (chap. 1:4), and from whom all true life in the soul proceeds.

3. That the resurrection, and the life from which it springs, are secured to men by their union to Him through faith.

4. That in the experience of the believer there is

(1) A resurrection of the soul from sin.

(2) A living in the Spirit.

(3) A transformation of death so that the believer may be said to never die.

(4) A complete abolition of death by the resurrection of the body.

Lessons

1. Christs presence with the soul is the certain destruction of death.

2. Christs intercession for His people is better understood now than it was Heb_7:25).

3. The resurrection, as explained by Christ, a perennial source of comfort for the bereaved and dying.

4. The only just verdict that can be pronounced on Jesus is that of Son of God. (T. Whitelaw, D. D.)

Jesus and Martha

I. THE SOCIAL SADNESS OF DEATH. The death of Lazarus had spread a dark shadow over the hearts of not a few. Besides the sisters the neighbours were affected (Joh_11:19). The God of Love has implanted in human hearts a mighty tie of sympathy, and the groan of one will vibrate on the heart chords of many. The more love a man has in him the larger the amount of vicarious suffering that he will endure in this world of grief. Hence He who had more love in Him than all the race besides became a man of sorrows to carry ours. To suffer for others by sympathy is not only natural, but Christly. We are commanded to bear one anothers burdens.

II. THE EXTRAORDINARY CLAIM OF CHRIST (Joh_11:25-26). These words, which flow so naturally from Christ, would have been blasphemy from any other. They imply

1. That death is a great evil--not as a mere dissolution of soul and body, which is natural, but as the consequence of sin, and so having a dreadful moral significance and terror--a sting, giving it virus and agony. There are

(1) Its physical sufferings. Had there been no sin there would have been no pain.

(2) Its grievous disappointments. Rut for sin man would have had no broken purposes.

(3) Its social disruptions.

(4) Its moral forebodings. Without these death might be hailed as a blessing--these make it a curse.

2. That from this evil Christ is the great Deliverer.

(1) Christ is life--original, absolute, I am He that liveth, etc.

(2) He is resuscitating life--not only creating the new, but raising the old. Understanding death as the curse of sin, Christ is the Resurrection in that

(a) He delivers men from sin.

(b) He has abolished death.

3. That from this evil He delivers on the condition of trust in Him, not in doctrines about Him, etc.

III. THE NOBLE CONFESSION OF FAITH (Joh_11:27). (D. Thomas, D. D.)

Martha and Jesus

I. MARTHA IS A TYPE OF ANXIOUS BELIEVERS. They believe truly, but not with such confidence as to lay aside their care.

1. She set a practical bound to the Saviours words: Of course there will be a resurrection, and Lazarus will rise with the rest. We limit the words of the Holy One. Of course they mean so much, but we cannot allow that they mean more.

2. She laid the words of Jesus on the shelf, as things so trite and sure that they were of small practical importance. When you believe a truth, but neglect it, it is the same as not believing. Some never question a doctrine, that is not their temptation; they accept the gospel as true, but never expect to see its promises carried out.

3. She set the promise in the remote distance. This is a common folly. Telescopes are meant to bring objects near to the eye, but some look through the mental telescope at the wrong end. Do not refuse the present blessing and say, My Lord delayeth His coming.

4. She made the promise unreal and impersonal, mixing Lazarus with the rest of the dead. We take the promises and say, That is true to all Gods people. If so, it is true to us; but we miss that point. There is such a thing as speaking of the promises in a magnificent style, and yet being in deep spiritual poverty: as if a man should boast of the wealth of England while he has not a penny. If you are a child of God, all things are yours and you may help yourself.

II. HOW JESUS DEALT WITH MARTHA.

1. He did not grow angry with her and say, I am ashamed of you that you should have such low thoughts of Me. She thought that she was honouring Jesus by her acknowledgment of His special power with God. And in similar cases it ill becomes a servant to lose patience where the Master shows so much.

2. With gentle spirit Jesus proceeds to teach her more of the things concerning Himself. This is the true way to cure despondency. I am, not I can get the Resurrection. Gods people want to know more of Jesus. Some of them know more than enough of themselves, and they will break their hearts if they go on reading much longer in that black letter book. Poor Martha was looking up into the sky for life, or down into the deeps for resurrection, when the Resurrection and the Life was by.

Learn

1. To construe the promises in their largest sense.

2. To look to the Promiser, and not to the difficulties which surround the accomplishment of the promise. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

Martha went … but Mary sat still

Martha meeting Christ

Marthas met is a perfect tense; Marys sat is an imperfect. It is impossible not to see the characteristic temperament of each sister coming out here, and doubtless it is written for our learning. Martha--active, stirring, busy, demonstrative--cannot wait, but runs impulsively to meet Jesus. Mary--quiet, gentle, pensive, meditative, contemplative, meek--sits passively at home. Yet I venture to think that of the two sisters, Martha here appears to most advantage. There is such a thing as being so crushed and stunned by our affliction that we do not adorn our profession under it. Is there not something of this in Marys conduct throughout this chapter? There is a time to stir, as well as to sit still; and here, by not stirring, Mary certainly missed hearing our Lords glorious declaration about Himself. I would not be mistaken in saying this. Both these holy women were true disciples; yet if Mary showed more grace on a former occasion than Martha, I think Martha here showed more than Mary. Let us never forget that there are differences of temperament among believers, and let us make due allowance for others if they are not quite like ourselves. There are believers who are quiet, passive, silent, and meditative; and believers who are active, stirring, and demonstrative. The well-ordered Church must find room, place, and work for all. We need Marys as well as Marthas, and Marthas as well as Marys. (Bp. Ryle.)

Lord, if Thou hadst been here, my brother had not died

If

Lord, if Thou hadst been here, my brother had not died. How natural it all is! If Thou hadst been here. Prone is the human heart to utter just such words as these. Much virtue in an if, says the poet. But there is also much torture in it. Had this been done or that, had such and such precautions been taken, had the doctor been sent for a little sooner, had certain remedies been tried which were learned of too late, had we not moved into that house, the result might have been different. So we go over the whole miserable catalogue of peradventures and possibilities with much bitterness of spirit. That is the tendency and the temptation. But it should never be done. That if has no business in our bosom. It is a stinging serpent that should be ruthlessly cast out. There is no if. Nothing ever simply happens so. Chance is the god of atheism, and will minister no comfort in the time of trouble. Banish him. The Lord God omnipotent reigneth, and all things come of Him. Our ignorance is as much a part of the Divine plan as our knowledge. He does not mean us to know all things. (Boston Homilies.)

The imperfection of spiritual qualities

God made the first marriage--of the body and soul in creation, and man the first divorce--of the body and soul through sin. God allows no such second marriages as are implied in the transmigration of souls into other bodies. And because God has made this band of marriage indissoluble but by death, as far as man is immortal, his divorce is only separation. Body and soul shall come together again at the Resurrection. To establish the assurance of this God raised Lazarus and others here. Note from the text

I. THAT THERE IS NOTHING IN THIS WORLD PERFECT.

1. In the best things.

(1) Knowledge. What thing do we know perfectly? One philosopher thinks he has dived at the bottom when he says he knows nothing but this, that he knows nothing; and yet another thinks he has expressed more knowledge by saying that he knows not so much as that.

(2) Faith. This imperfection is seen in the apostles prayer for an increase of faith (Luk_17:5); in Christs upbraidings (Mat_6:30; Mat_8:26); in Pauls congratulations and prayer for the Thessalonians (1Th_1:2; 1Th_3:10; 2Th_1:3); in the expressions rich in faith, abound in faith, measure of faith. Deceive not yourselves, then, that if you have faith you need no more.

(3) That our hope is not perfect we see from Jam_4:3. We cannot hope constantly because we do not pray aright; and to make a prayer a right prayer there must go so many circumstances as that the best man may suspect his best prayer. Whereas, ordinarily, a fly, the opening of a door, a memory of yesterday, a fear of tomorrow, a noise in the ear, a fancy in the brain, destroy prayer.

(4) There is nothing perfect in our charity. There is no work so good as that we can look to God for thanks for it; none but has so much ill mingled with it that we need not bespeak Gods mercy.

2. How this weakness appears in the action in the text. Lest we should attribute it only to weak persons, note that Martha as well as Mary comes also in the same voice of infirmity (verse 32). Look upon

(1) Their faith. We cannot say as much as they did to any college of physicians; but the weakness of their faith lies in this, that they said so much and no more to Christ; and regard even that power to be derived from God and not inherent (verse 22). Again, they relied so much upon His corporal presence. It was this that Christ diverted Mary from after His resurrection (Joh_20:16). Touch Me not--send thy thoughts whither I am going. Peter had another holy distemper upon this personal presence, Depart from Me (Luk_5:8). The sisters longed for Him, and Peter to be delivered from Him, both out of weakness and error, as do they who attribute too much or too little to Christs presence in ordinances. To imprison Christ in opere operato, to conclude that where that action is done Christ must necessarily be is to err weakly with these sisters; but to banish Christ from those holy actions is to err with Peter.

(2) So in their hope and their manner of expressing it. For they did not go; they sent--unlike Nicodemus, who came in person for his sick soul, and the centurion for his sick servant, and Jairus and the woman with the issue. That is not enough; we must bring Christ and our necessities nearer together. Then they made no request, but left an intimation to work on Christ; but I must not wrap up my necessities in general terms, but descend to particulars. As God is an accessible God He is open to receive thy smallest petitions, and as He is an inexhaustible God He cannot be pressed too much. Pray personally, rely not upon dead or living saints, and pray frequently and earnestly.

(3) In their charity even towards their dead brother. To lament a dead friend is natural; but inordinate lamentation implies a worse state in him that is gone; and if we believe him in heaven to wish him here is uncharitable.

3. Yet for all these imperfections Christ doth not refuse or chide, but cherishes their piety. There is no form of building stronger than an arch, and yet an arch has declinations which even a flat roof has not. So our devotions do not the less bear up upright in the sight of God, because they have some declinations towards natural affections. All these infirmities of theirs multiply this consolation, that though God look upon the inscription, He looks upon the metal too; though He look that His image should be preserved in us, He looks in what earthen vessels this image is put by His own hand.

II. As in spiritual things there is nothing perfect, SO IN TEMPORAL THERE IS NOTHING PERMANENT.

1. The earth itself is in motion.

2. Consider the greatest bodies upon it--monarchies which one would think destiny might stare at and not shake; and the smallest bodies, the hairs of our head, which one would think destiny would hardly observe; and yet destiny or, to speak as a Christian, God, is no more troubled to make a monarchy ruinous than a hair grey; nay, nothing needs be done, the one will ruin and the other turn grey of itself.

3. In the elements there is no acquiescence, but a transmutation into one another; air condensed becomes water, and air rarefied becomes fire.

4. It is so in the conditions of men: a merchant condensed, packed up in a great estate, becomes a lord; and a merchant rarefied by a riotous son evaporates into nothing. And if there were anything permanent in the world, set we gain nothing, because we cannot stay with it.

5. The world is a great volume, and man its index. Even mans body is an illustration of all nature. Even in its highest estates, as the temple of the Holy Ghost, it must perish. Conclusion: But as in spiritual things there is no perfectness, and yet God accepts our religious services, so, notwithstanding that all temporal things, Gods noblest piece included, decays, yet God affords this body a resurrection. The Gentiles describe the sad state of death as one everlasting night; but to a Christian it is the day of death and the day of resurrection. And looking at this we may invert the text and say, Because Thou wast here our brother is not dead. For Christ is with the Christian in life, death, and the resurrection. (J. Donne, D. D.)

Salvation, not from suffering, but by it

I. THE LOWEST VIEW OF LIFE looks out upon it only as a hostelry, where every guest is to seize on so many of the good things exposed as the laws allow. This selfish hunt will take different directions according to the ruling appetite. But the characteristic mark on it all is that it disowns God. This system not only fails to provide for the chief internal necessity--viz., a religion; it fails to meet the external fact of suffering. That is a test of all philosophies and theories of life. It is useless to leave it out of the calculation; it forces its way back into every lot. Life does not become a problem till we taste of its bitterness. Whenever pain, bereavement, etc., come, that comfort-seeking, epicurean plan of living collapses, and the least that the man can then do is to fly to Zenos porch and borrow some crumbs of frigid dignity that fall from the stoics table.

II. ASCEND A STEP HIGHER. Here we find God to be acknowledged, but more through fear than devout submission. Providence had returned to the world from which unbelief had rejected Him; but the confession, Thy will be done, is not so full as to include the giving up of the dearest idols, and there is the suspicion that here and there some sparrow or more precious thing may fall without the Fathers notice. This state is met by suffering, the touchstone; how does it behave itself? Well, but not best. Soberly but not serenely. Some selfish preferences linger to mar the beauty of resignation--to keep back part of the souls trust, and so disturb the perfect peace of believing. There is the beginning of faith--too much to be thrown away, not enough to live by. This is precisely where Martha stands. There is a mixture of the strength and weakness of faith, perhaps of faith and superstition. She believed in the power and love of Jesus--that was her true faith--but she believed that it must operate in prolonging her brothers life, and was limited to His physical presence. That was the falsity and weakness of her faith. Jesus corrects it with, Whosoever [anywhere] believeth on Me shall never die.

III. Out of that state into A HIGHER ONE STILL Christ wishes to lift her and us. Where a holy soul will be felt to be of more value than any freedom from pain; when sympathy with Christ is valued more than having a human friend at our side. Saved by suffering, not from it, is the law of life revealed in Christ. Character depends on inward strength, but this strength has two conditions: it is increased only by being put forth, and tested only by resistance. So the spiritual character must enter into conflict, and stand in comparison with something formidable enough to be a standard of its power.

1. The ordinary conditions of a prosperous fortune furnishes no such standard. The favoured moral constitutions which ripen into sainthood under perpetual comfort are rare exceptions. Suffering in some form must put faith to the proof and purify it; what form God, who knows best, must determine. The sisters must see Lazarus die, Matthew must forsake all to follow the Master. How many of us take up Marthas plaint instead of, Lord in these chastenings of friendly love Thou hast been here--Thy will be done. And Christ shows three times over that the design here was that the disciples, the sisters, and the people, might believe.

2. In another class of moral experiences the principle has a direct application--in those who long more earnestly for rest than faithful submission. They have heard that there is joy in believing, and so believe for the sake of the joy, and this, though a nobler thirst than that of the senses, is tainted with selfishness and wanting in faith. Then, again, the mercenary tendency to offer to God your good works as a price for purchasing self-complacency needs to be watched. It defeats its own end. Faith never comes that way: it comes swiftest when you seek it as an end least. Seek purity, harmony with God, and peace in Gods good time will come. Stillness is our needed sacrifice. Baffled and broken the soul must often be ere its immortal strength comes. Not from but by this suffering we shall be saved.

3. We may embrace all those instances in which we doubt whether some care was not omitted whereby the fatal blow might have been warded off When shall we learn that God takes the past into His secure keeping, and that even out of sorrows that we might have prevented, a spiritual benefit may be now drawn greater than their prevention. Vain cry, Lord, if Thou hadst, etc. But to receive and bless Him in whatever robes of darkness, when He comes. Conclusion:

1. Suffering is disciplinary.

2. If our desires reach only after exemption from it, they are but half faithless.

3. The true conquest and peace of faith, as well as the solution of the mystery of sorrow, lie in our willingness to suffer, so far as it may bring us to the society of our Lord. (Bp. Huntington.)

The power of God to prevent death

I. GOD IS ABLE TO PREVENT ANY PERSON DYING SO SOON AS HE DOES DIE. He preserved the lives of men much longer in former ages: but He could have prevented Methuselah dying at 969 had He pleased. He is able to preserve men from sickness, the common cause of death--and He does so often for seventy, eighty, or ninety years. And if men become sick He can raise them as He did Hezekiah. So with accidents, another cause of death.

II. GOD NEVER DOES PREVENT MEN DYING AS SOON AS THEY DO DIE. He might have prevented Lazarus dying, yet He did not. And this holds in all cases; and no power can move Him when He chooses that any shall die. This we see in Davids prayer for his little infant, in those of pious parents for theirs, and in those of the Church for good and useful men.

III. WHY GOD DOES NOT PREVENT PERSONS DYING AS SOON AS THEY DO DIE. Because

1. He knows that their appointed time to die is come. Is there not an appointed time, etc.

2. He sees it best for them to die then. He knows what will be the consequence of living, and takes them away from the evil to come.

3. He knows that it will be the-best for the survivors. Many have done more good by dying than they would by living.

How often has the death of a child resulted in the conversion of the parents! This was the reason of the death of Lazarus.

4. He has a supreme regard for His own glory. He displays a wisdom, goodness and sovereignty which surpasses that of all His intelligent creatures.

Improvement. If God can preserve human life or cut it short as He pleases, then

1. It is proper to pray for the sick as long as the least spark of life remains. Neither young nor old ought to give up the hope of living; and God has wrought wonders in answer to prayer.

2. We ought never to pray for the preservation of life unconditionally. We ought to rejoice that we are in Gods hands, who knows best. So Christ prayed conditionally in view of His tremendous sufferings--Not My will.

3. All ought to carry about with them a sense that they are dying creatures. They know not what a day or an hour may bring forth. Lord make me to know mine end.

4. Death commonly comes unexpected. We are ready to remember that God can preserve our lives as long as He pleases, but forget that He has an appointed time, and that time always comes suddenly.

5. None can enjoy life without becoming truly religious. Then whatever comes we shall be ready for the joy of our Lord.

6. Mourners have always reason to exercise unreserved submission to his bereaving hand. (N. Emmons, D. D.)

Restoration better titan prevention

I. MARTHA SAW NOT THE CONNECTION BETWEEN THE DEATH AND BLESSEDNESS OF CHRISTS SERVANTS. She had largely in her thought the Jewish idea of death as the disturber of fellowship. Truer to have said, Thou hast been here and my brother has lived. Christs influence goes to make men feel that they are citizens of heaven. The whole meaning of our life is in the future; death is the portal to that perfection.

1. We feel in our hearts that there is an inseparable connection between faith and knowledge. The relation is not complete here. We must die to know the right coordination of the two.

2. Aspiration and perfection are not equal here. In eternity demand and satisfaction are one.

3. How sundered are love and happiness here, where love and sorrow are fellows. In heaven measureless love will yield limitless gladness.

4. Power and opportunity are frequently divided. In heaven power and environment will be matched. We must die to realize the true correlation of our being with the spiritual universe.

III. SHE DID NOT SEE THE CONNECTION BETWEEN CHRISTS DELAY AND THE GOOD OF ALL CONCERNED. Jesus was absent not that Lazarus might die, but that he might die in faith without sight. Christ might have checked the disease in Person, but His delay furthered the purposes of His love.

1. To educate their trust.

2. To prepare them for the actual work about to be wrought.

3. To reveal His glory more fully.

4. To make the deepest impression on the unbelieving.

III. SHE DID NOT SEE AS WE DO NOW THE CONNECTION BETWEEN THEIR SUFFERING AND THE MYSTERY OF THE CROSS. John shows us how the miracle was a distinct link in the chain of events that led to the death of Jesus.

1. They suffered because Christ was to suffer. As some on-rushing star sets up perturbations in other worlds that come within the range of its influence, so this great process of God in sacrifice draws into its vortex the lives of men.

2. They suffered because Christ must suffer, Ought not Christ to suffer these things? Ought not His disciples to share in the community of His sorrows? This is the explanation of pain and conflict. To see the relation between our pain and Christs Cross is to be qualified to meet and conquer it. The fellowship of such suffering carries in its heart even now the sharing of His glory. (J. Matthews.)

Contingent events and providence

I. THERE IS A CLOSE ANALOGY BETWEEN THE FEELING HERE EXPRESSED AND THAT EXPERIENCED BY MOST BEREAVED PERSONS. How few afflictions which are not made doubly afflictive by an if. If our friend had done this instead of that--if we had only foreseen. These thoughts make perfect resignation impossible. They come in between us and God, and bewilder in a maze of second causes which no man can thread or find repose in.

II. IF THERE IS ROOM FOR THESE REFLECTIONS IN ANY, THERE IS ROOM FOR THEM IN EVERY CASE. Take any instance of death, except by constitutional decay, and you can always fix upon some circumstance which seemed the turning point. Only let danger be foreseen, and, humanly speaking, in nine cases out of ten deaths would be prevented. If a man knew he was going to catch a fever or meet with an accident, how he would avoid the dangerous localities. Calamities flow immediately from the shortness of human foresight. Could ocean storms be calculated or shifting currents mapped, there would be no shipwrecks. Here Divine Providence overrules and moves in ways higher than ours. To say, therefore, Had it been thus my brother or child had not died is, to complain of the ordinance of Divine Wisdom by which man is kept ignorant of the future.

III. THIS PRINCIPLE APPLIES EQUALLY TO THE HAPPY PORTIONS OF OUR LIFE. Recovery, preservation, prosperity, depend equally on contingencies, which, when we look back, we see might have been otherwise. A choice which has led to the most fortunate issues was determined, not by foresight of the end, but by the most casual circumstances. Thus there is room for the if in our joys which we cannot number.

IV. THE NECESSARY LIMITS OF HUMAN FORESIGHT INDICATE THE POINT ON WHICH WE CHIEFLY NEED TO PRACTICE CHRISTIAN SUBMISSION. Our ignorance is part of the Divine plan, and is essential to happiness. You murmur that you could not see a particular calamity so as to have prevented it: but then you would have to see all. This would make you a secondary providence in your own circle, and impose a weight of care which Omnipotence alone could sustain for a single day.

V. THE CONDITION OF MORTAL LIFE IS SUMMED UP IN TWO WORDS--MANS DUTY AND GODS PROVIDENCE. In the hour of bereavement the question as to our faithfulness in the relation suspended will and ought to come up. When you can answer it to your satisfaction you have no ground for uneasiness. You did what you could. You had not Divine foresight: do not then torment yourself, because you were not in Gods stead. Do your duty, and in the majority of instances it will lead to the outward results you desire. Obey natures laws, and health will be the rule, disease the exception. But with all your care there is another system: that of Divine Providence, which has no law but eternal love. The decree has gone forth--Ye shall have tribulation, and we need the discipline as pilgrims todetach us from the attractions by the wayside, and to fix our affections on things above. When God sees that we need this, vain are our anxieties and precautions. All that remains is to say, It is the Lord; let Him do what seemest to Him good. (A. P. Peabody, D. D.)

The consolations of Christ adapted to She state and character of His people

(text and Joh_11:32)

I. HOW MUCH SAMENESS THERE IS IN GRIEF. It is remarkable that two persons so different in turn of mind and feeling should both utter the same words. It shows how the heart when deeply moved is the same in all. The sisters were united in their affection to Lazarus and in their reliance on Jesus. Together they watched, sent for Christ, waited anxiously for His coming, fell into the dreary sadness which follows the first violence of grief, then greet Jesus as He comes too late in the same way. It is the voice of nature mingling its vain regrets with the resignation of simple faith.

1. There is the feeling that it might have been otherwise. We know not what detained Thee, perhaps we did not send, or the messenger did not reach Thee in time. Oh that the sickness had happened when Thou was in Jerusalem! Is it not thus that the heart speaks under every trying dispensation? If some measure had been adopted, or such an accident not happened, my brother had not died. However natural, is this not the very folly of unbelief conceiving Christ as limited by events which He Himself ordains? Nay, He might have answered, I might have been there; and though not I might have kept him alive, or being there might have let him die. Whatever comes is not accident, but His will. Be still and know that He is God.

2. That it should have been otherwise. We sent a special message, why linger and not make haste to help us--an instinctive complaint in a season of bereavement. It is hard to believe that God ordains it and does no wrong. You can give many reasons. How serviceable that valuable life might have been to God and man. But remember God has many purposes with which you are unacquainted. Wait patiently and you will see that it was for His glory. It may be that He had need of His services elsewhere.

3. That it was sincere, if melancholy, satisfaction in meeting with Jesus at last. He had not come at the time, in the way, for the purpose they expected, and too late for their purpose, but still He had come for good, and they gratefully receive Him. Happy if you so meet the Saviours advances. Like Rachel, you may refuse to be comforted, and like Jonah, when your gourd withers, you may be angry, and turn away when Christ comes. Beware of such moods. It is enough if He is with you to fill the aching void in your affections, and be to you instead of what you have lost--better than a thousand brothers.

II. HOW MUCH VARIETY THERE IS IN GRIEF. The sisters differed in their sorrow as they did generally. Both regarded Christ with confidence and affection, but Martha showed it by active and Mary by quiet devotion. So now, when Martha received intimation of Christs approach, she rose in haste impatient to meet Him; but Mary remained in the house absorbed in her grief; and when she went forth they said, she goeth to the grave, etc., as though she, unlike Martha, could do nothing else.

1. Thus in different circumstances the same temper may be an advantage or a snare. Mary was never so occupied with an emotion of one subject as not to be ready for the call to another. This was a disadvantage when she was so hurried with this and that household care as to have no time to wait on the word of life: but it was an advantage now that she could shake off her depression and hasten to meet Christ. The same profound feeling, however, which made Mary an attentive listener made her the most helpless sufferer until Jesus sent specially to rouse her (verse 28).

2. In the meeting the difference is equally characteristic. Martha is calm and collected enough to enter into argument, and at length is sufficiently self-possessed to make a formal declaration of her faith. Not so Mary--her heart is too full for many words, she cannot command the passion of her soul. She can but cast herself down weeping, and say (verse 32).

III. HOW MUCH COMPASS THERE IS IN THE CONSOLATION OF CHRIST, ADAPTED TO GRIEF OF EVERY MOULD AND MOOD.

1. Marthas distress admitted of discussion and discourse. Jesus spoke to her and led her to speak to Him, and though she understands Him not fully she is relieved by having laid on her Divine Friend the burden of her soul, and with her lightened heart she declares her entire acquiescence in Him (verse 27).

2. Mary is differently affected and His sympathy is shown in a different way. He is much more profoundly moved. He does not reply in words, for her own were so few. Grief has choked her, and His own responsive sigh is more comforting than any promise. Jesus wept. Blessed mourner with whose tears thy Saviour mingles His own. With Martha Jesus reasoned: with Mary Jesus wept.

3. How confidently every Christian mourner can come to Him. He will give you the very cordial you need. He is a patient hearer if you have anything to say, and He will speak as you are able to hear it, and if you cannot collect your thoughts, and your heart is hot within you-remember that with these groanings which cannot be uttered the Spirit maketh intercession for you. (R. S. Candlish, D. D.)

Whatsoever thou wilt ask of God

The Master advocate

This is our comfort, that Christ is all in all with the Father, and may have what He will of Him. What need we of any other master of requests than Christ. If David will hear Joab for Absalom, and Herod Blastus for the Tyrians, what may not we hope? (J. Trapp.)

Death defeated by prayer

At a certain time Luther received an express, stating that his bosom friend and co-worker in the reformation, Philip Melancthon, was lying at the point of death; upon which information he immediately set out upon the journey of some hundred and fifty miles, to visit him, and upon his arrival, he actually found all the distinctive features of death; such as the glazed eye, the cold clammy sweat, and insensible lethargy, upon him. Upon witnessing these sure indications of a speedy dissolution, as he mournfully bent over him, he exclaimed with great emotion, Oh, how awful is the change wrought upon the visage of my dear brother! On hearing this voice, to the astonishment of all present, Melancthon opened his eyes, and looking up into Luthers face, remarked, Oh, Luther, is this you? Why dont you let me depart in peace? Upon which Luther replied, Oh no, Philip, we cannot spare you yet. Luther then turned away from the bed, and fell upon his knees, with his face towards the window, and began to wrestle with God in prayer, and to plead with great fervency, for more than an hour, the many proofs recorded in Scripture of His being a prayer hearing and prayer answering God; and also how much he stood in need of the services of Melancthon, in furthering that cause, in which the honour and glory of Gods great name, and the eternal welfare of unnumbered millions of immortal souls, were so deeply interested; and that God should not deny him this one request, to restore him the aid of his well-tried brother Melancthon. He then rose up from prayer, and went to the bedside again, and took Melancthon by the hand. Upon which Melancthon again remarked, Oh, dear Luther, why dont you let me depart in peace? To which Luther again answered, No, no, Philip, we cannot possibly spare you from the field of labour yet. Luther then requested the nurse to go and make him a dish of soup, according to his instructions. Which being prepared, was brought to Luther, who requested his friend Melancthon to eat of it. Melancthon again asked him, Oh, Luther, why will you not let me go home, and be at rest? To which Luther replied as before, Philip, we cannot spare you yet. Melancthon then exhibited a disinclination to partake of the nourishment prepared for him. Upon which Luther remarked, Philip, eat, or I will excommunicate you. Melancthon then partook of the food prepared, and immediately grew better, and was speedily restored to his wonted health and strength again, and laboured for years afterwards with his coadjutors in the blessed cause of the reformation. Upon Luthers arrival at home, he narrated to his beloved wife Catherine the above circumstances, and added, God gave me my brother Melancthon back in direct answer to prayer; and added further, with patriarchal simplicity, God on a former occasion gave me, also, you back, Kata, in answer to my prayer.

Thy brother shall rise again

Earthly relationship not destroyed by death

There was that in the tie of blood which death was powerless to alter. Many an aching heart would find comfort, if it were assured of this. Have we lost them forever as ours, those loved ones--lost all the claim upon their special answering love, which those old earthly names, brother, sister, and the like, gave us? Is the Communion of Saints one monotonous dead level of spiritual relationship? Or are the ties of earth--whether ties of blood, or ties of friendship, or ties of love--not abolished, but transfigured, in that mysterious world beyond death? On the warrant of these words of Jesus! dare to believe that they will be glorified, not destroyed; that that, which more than anything else makes earth bright and worth having, will be at least one of the lesser luminaries of heaven. Nay, even if we had no such words of Jesus as these, I could never bring myself to believe that God would so mock us, as to give us these relationships and bid us be faithful to them, only to tear our hearts in pieces with grief--grief which must necessarily be intense in proportion to our fidelity to them--when the cruel hour of death arrives to dissolve them. It is sad enough that they should be even suspended, through ignorance of a common tongue--their destruction would be intolerable to us. As the seed is transformed into the plant--as the natural body is transfigured into the spiritual body--so will the earthly relationship be glorified into its heavenly counterpart. (D. J.Vaughan, M. A.)

Funeral sermon

Let us survey

I. THE LIFE OF THE DEPARTED. Note

1. His affection as a relative.

2. His attachment as a friend.

3. His grace as a Christian.

4. His fidelity as a minister.

II. THE DEATH OF THE DEPARTED. It was

1. Unexpected.

2. Tranquil.

3. Gainful to Him. He has

(1) Full vision of Christ--of those around the throne.

(2) Full image.

(3) Full enjoyment.

4. Loss to you--as relative, friend, Christian, minister.

III. HIS RESURRECTION.

1. To an immortal life.

2. In a superior state.

3. For the noblest purposes. This resurrection is

(1) Possible.

(2) Reasonable.

(3) Certain.

(4) Desirable

(a) To see his bereaved kindred.

(b) To meet his sorrowing friends.

(c) To present his beloved people.

(d) To enjoy his incarnate God. (J. Judson.)

The identity of the earthly and the heavenly life

Thy brother--the very being that had died--the same in feeling, mind, sentiment. This is the Christian idea of immortality. The next life is an unbroken continuation of this as regards

I. OUR PURSUIT OF KNOWLEDGE. Why should this be closed by the opening of the souls prison gates? So far from this it hardly admits of doubt that the direction which the mind has assumed in the obscurity and distractions of the world will determine its favourite course when for darkness there shall be light, and for hindrances helps, in the case of, e.g., the philosopher, the scientist, the historian.

II. OUR AESTHETIC NATURE. No attribute of the Creator is more richly manifested than His love of beauty. For all refined tastes He has furnished nutriment with the same bounty as that with which He has provided for our lower needs. We trace God none the less in the beauty that flows from human hands. Man, in the pride of his art, and at the zenith of his power is the copyist of the Creator; and if I can be glad and worshipful in the presence of the copies, how much more in the better life shall I be sensible of their archetypes. And when St. John lays all nature under contribution, and piles splendour upon splendour to shadow forth the glories of the new Jerusalem, I know the very power of painting those gorgeous forms is an authentic prophecy of more of beauty in heaven than heart has conceived.

III. OUR CAPACITY FOR FRIENDSHIP. This capacity for transcends its earthly uses, and our power of enjoying it here. The most tender home love only intensifies and enlarges the power of loving. With this proclivity to form attachments we are saddened, not only by the death-thinned ranks of our friends, but by the multitude of the living who win our dear regard and then seldom come within our reach--friends of our travels, e.g., and friends in distant cities. Why are we made capable of loves so strong, and yet so evanescent? To lay up treasures for the heavenly life, providing friends that shall be ours forever. There will be in heaven time enough and room enough for all. (A. P. Peabody, D. D.)

I know he shall rise again in the resurrection

Grace imagined less

The grace was so great that Martha does what we all often do--imagines it less: as when you slip a sovereign into a boys hand on his birthday, and he imagines it a shilling, having no thought of a gift so great. (J. Culross, D. D.)

A near benefit not understood

This passage of the history may remind us of somewhat similar in the conversation with the woman of Samaria at Jacobs well. Neither does Martha here, nor that woman, understand the nearness of the benefit. In each case, half despondingly, they put it off. Yet to the one, speaking only of a distant future, and saying, I know that Messias cometh: when He is come He will tell us all things; the Lord suddenly rejoins, I that speak unto thee am He. And so here to the other, who can think of nothing nearer, nothing better, than the remote general resurrection, the Lord likewise rejoins, I am the Resurrection and the Life. Each has but the vague, inoperative idea of the final good: He speaks to each of an even present blessing. (G. J. Browne, M. A.)

Our treatment of the promises

We do with the promises often as a poor old couple did with a precious document, which might have cheered their old age had they used it according to its real value. A gentleman stepping into a poor womans house saw framed and glazed upon the wall a French note for a thousand francs. He said to the old folks, How came you by this? They informed him that a poor French soldier had been taken in by them and nursed until he died, and he had given them that little picture when he was dying as a memorial of him. They thought it such a pretty souvenir that they had framed it, and there it was adorning the cottage wall. They were greatly surprised when they were told that it was worth a sum which would be quite a little fortune for them if they would but turn it into money. Are we not equally unpractical with far more precious things? Have you not certain of the words of your great Lord framed and glazed in your hearts, and do you not say to yourselves, They are so sweet and precious? and yet you have never turned them into actual blessing--never used them in the hour of need. You have done as Martha did when she took the words, Thy brother shall rise again, and put round about them this handsome frame, in the resurrection at the last day. Oh that we had grace to turn Gods bullion of gospel into current coin, and use them as our present spending money. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

I am the Resurrection and the Life

The Resurrection

All the titles of our Lord are names of power. They express His nature, perfection, or prerogatives; what they declare He is. They are shadows of a Divine substance. He who is Very Life raised Himself from the dead: I am the Resurrection. On the first day of the week His glorious soul returned to His pure flesh, and His manhood, whole and perfect, through the power of His Godhead, arose of His own will. He came back the very same, and yet the same no more. The dishonour of His holy passion had passed away, but its tokens still were there. And as in body, so in soul. Death had no more dominion over Him, yet He was full of sympathy, learned by dying. All the depths of His human experience were in Him still. He learned obedience by the things which he suffered; and the ineffable mystery of His three and thirty years of sorrow rose with Him from the grave. Wherefore this Divine name, as it reveals the power of His own resurrection, so it is the pledge of ours. It is a pledge to us of many joys; but chiefly of three Divine gifts.

1. The first is a perfect newness of body and soul. This very body shall be deathless and glorious as the body of His glory when He arose from the dead. And so, too, of the soul. It shall be still more glorious, even as the spirit is above the flesh. The more we know of ourselves, the more incredible, if I may so speak of a very blessedness, this promise seems. To be without sin, what else is heaven? And can it ever be that we who brought sin with our life blood into the world--who have fallen and soiled ourselves through and through with wilful evil--that we shall be one day clean as the light, and white as the driven snow? Yet this is His pledge to us.

2. Another gift pledged to us is the perfect restoration of all His brethren in His kingdom (Joh_17:24; Joh_14:2-3). We shall be with Him. We shall behold Him as He is; He will behold us as we are: He in the perfect sameness of His person; we in ours. What, then, means this unbelieving Christian world, when it asks, Shall we then recognize each other? Will not they all know Him as He them, and all know each other as He knows each? The law of perfect recognition is inseparable from the law of perfect identity. Our individual consciousness must be eternal. We should not be what we are to ourselves, if we were not so to others. The kingdom of God in glory is the perfection of His kingdom in grace, in which every several soul here tried, chastened, and purified, shall be there blessed, crowned and sainted--the same in person, changed only to perfection. And more than this. The perfect restitution which shall be in the kingdom of the resurrection will bring back, not only perfect mutual recognition, but the restoration of all pure and consecrated bonds.

3. This title pledges to us an immortal kingdom. The Resurrection has given back to us an inheritance in the paradise of God, where there shall be a new heaven and a new earth, of which the first creation, even in its perfection, was only an imperfect shadow. In that true paradise there shall be no seasons nor vicissitudes, no sweat of the face nor hard toil for bread. An everlasting noontide shall be there; an endless spring in the newness of unfading joy, a perpetual autumn in the ripeness of its gifts. There shall be the tree of life bearing twelve manner of fruits; all joy and all delight for every capacity of man; reward for every toil, and health for every wound, after the manifold trial of every soul, in the Israel of God. (Archdeacon Manning.)

Life everlasting

After the resurrection comes life everlasting. I am the Life! This life and the life to come are not two, but one and the same. Death is not the ending of one, and resurrection the beginning of another, but through all there runs one imperishable life. A river which plunges into the earth, is buried for awhile, and then bursts forth more mightily and in a fuller tide, is not two, but one continuous stream. The light of today and the light of tomorrow are not two, but one living splendour. Night is but a veil between the light and us. So with life and death. The life of the soul is immortal, an image of Gods own eternity. It lives on in sleep; it lives on through death; it lives even more abundantly, and with fuller and mightier energy.

2. Another great law here revealed is, that as we die, so we shall rise; as there is no new beginning of our life, so there is no new beginning of our character. We shall all carry with us into the eternal world the very self which we have here stamped and moulded, or distorted and branded--the renewed image of God, or the image of the evil one. Our life from first to last teaches us this lesson; it is one continuous whole, gathering up itself through all its course, and perpetuating its earliest features in its latest self: the child is in the boy, the boy is in the man; the man is himself forever.

3. The resurrection will make each one perfect in his own several characters. Nay, even at death it shall be unfolded into a new measure of fulness. Our character is our will; for what we will, we are. Our will contains our whole intention; it sums up our spiritual nature; it contains what we call the tendency of our character: for the will gives the bias to the right or to the left; as we will, so we incline. Now this tendency, both for good and evil, is here imperfect; but it will be there fulfilled. Here it is hindered; the wicked are restrained by truth and grace, by laws and punishments, by fear and shame, by interest and the world; the good are hindered by sin and temptation, by their own infirmities and faults. But there all restraints shall be taken away, and all aids shall be supplied. It is both an awful and consoling thought. What sinners are now in measure, they shall then be in its fulness. So likewise with the faithful: what they have striven to be, they shall be made. Gods grace shall perfect what they had here desired.

Lessons

1. How dangerous is the least sin we do! Every act confirms some old tendency, or develops a new one.

2. How precious is every means of grace. (Archdeacon Manning.)

The Resurrection and the Life

I. THE CHARACTER. I am the Resurrection, etc. Christ is this.

1. As it is by Him that the doctrines of the resurrection and eternal life are revealed. None had a knowledge of the Resurrection, and there were only confused notions of immortality before Christ came. He taught these truths with the greatest clearness, and illustrated and proved them by raising others, and mostly by His own resurrection. This act of His was to extend His influence over the world and to the end of time.

2. As He has the power by which they are bestowed. Martha admitted the general fact; but Christ goes on to affirm that by His own power He could raise her dead brother when and how He pleased, when Martha came to the conclusion that He was the Messiah. In this assertion we see the supreme dignity of Christ. As the Father raiseth up, etc. The miracles at Nain of Jarius daughter, and here at the last day, prove Christ to be the Master of Eternity, King of kings, and Lord of lords.

II. THE PROMISE.

1. The characters to whom it is comprehensively directed. He that believeth, etc.

(1) The necessity of faith. It is the turning point in your immortality. Those who do not believe have no title to this and the other promises which make eternal life to depend upon faith.

(2) What have we to believe? Christ, in all the essential points of His character--Divinity, atonement, etc.

2. The particular application of the promise to the circumstances of those to whom it is addressed.

(1) Though he were dead. He who has believed, but is now in the grave, shall be restored to life. I, who am the Resurrection, etc., will not allow him to remain in that narrow house forever. Death itself shall die. We mourn not as those who are without hope.

(2) Whosoever liveth. He first goes and gives hope to the dead, and then He says of the living believer, he shall never die. What is death? The consequence of sin? The sins of the believer are pardoned. The effect of a curse? The curse from the believer is removed. The stroke is not in vengeance, but in love.

III. THE APPEAL. Believest thou this? Christ is desirous of bringing the whole to bear on personal experience. What is your answer? If we do believe this

1. We shall not mourn improperly for those who have gone, but have comfort concerning our departed friends.

2. It will be our principal security in the event of our own departure.

3. It will give the hope of a happy reunion on the day of final restoration.

4. The rejection of this testimony will be a cause of condemnation and eternal despair. (J. Parsons.)

Christ the Resurrection and the Life

1. Christs greatest utterance on death was spoken on the first occasion on which its dark question had come closely to His own soul. Elsewhere He had gone to meet it; here it had come to meet Him in that inner circle of friendship, and had gained complete possession.

2. The two mighty questions--What is death? Can it rend the friendships of life?--confronted the Redeemer; and the miracle was His answer. It showed that there was in Him a life which death had no power to destroy, and that death had not sundered Lazarus from Jesus or his sisters. It had made the ties of affection stronger than before, and had not quenched one faculty of his being.

I. OUR LIFE IN CHRIST IS A BATTLE; THROUGH DEATH IT RISES INTO A VICTORY. We carry within us our perpetual foe, and a thousand outward forces tend to quench the love of Christ within. This struggle is with death, for sin is death. The act of dying is but the outward and visible sign of this constant struggle. But in this last scene the apparent victim is conqueror; the life-long fight is finished, and the victory won. The life Christ gives demands a resurrection for its completion, and a resurrection in Christ makes death the fulness of life in victory.

II. OUR LIFE IN CHRIST IS A HOPE; BY DEATH IT RISES INTO ITS CONSUMMATION. The Christians hope is to see Christ, and be with Him, and like Him. From the earliest dawn of the new life that desire is kindled; and it deepens until it colours every aspiration, and finds its whole heaven in absent from the body, etc. To the first disciples the storms that swept over the lake had often been things of terror; but after Christ has calmed them every storm would seem holy with the memory of His presence. The desert hath oft seemed a strange, unfriendly region; but after Christ had fed the multitudes there, it would be sacred with the memory of the Saviours pity. Mount Tabor had long looked stern, but the memory of Christs unveiled glory there transformed it into a temple. And so it has ever been. The felt presence of Jesus has transfigured earths gloomiest places, poured a light into prisons, diffused peace through the cruel tortures of the rack, filled the martyrs soul with the dawn of paradise. Where Christ is is heaven. But this hope demands a resurrection. Here our visions are transient and partial; and until the veil of the body be rent, we shall not see Jesus as He is.

III. OUR LIFE IN CHRIST IS A SPIRITUAL FELLOWSHIP: BY DEATH IT BECOMES PERFECT AND ETERNAL. No man can be constrained by the love of Christ without feeling that henceforth he is bound by new and holy ties to the whole family in heaven and earth. It was just the depth and power of that fellowship which, in the first disciples, startled the world as a new thing. The world might crush the men, but it could not touch the fellowship; it might try to break up their union with fire and sword, but, as apostle and martyr passed away, the brethren who remained said only that they had gone to the earlier home, and were now waiting in the Fathers house the reunion. And in these days the fellowship of spiritual life is as real and powerful, and demands a resurrection. Death seems the great divider. No friendship here is perfect, no sympathy complete, no love ever reaches the fulness of which it dreams. The constant longing for complete communion is the souls great outcry for the resurrection day. And here again Christ, who is the life of our fellowship, gives us the pledge of its rising. In restoring Lazarus to his home, He showed that the ties that bind a brother to a sister are, when spiritual, among the things which shall rise again. In His words of farewell, He promises a Fathers house where we shall meet again; and in the forty days He showed that our communion shall rise from death, having lost nothing but its infirmity, and clothed in a beauty and a blessedness which we must die to know. The hands for whose vanished touch we wept in agony shall be clasped again; the voices that grew still shall be heard again, only purified from the notes of sorrow and resonant with the praises of the Lamb. (E. L. Hull, B. A.)

Christ the Resurrection and the Life

The Resurrection of the body; the Life of the soul.

I. CHRIST AS PROPHET, BY HIS TEACHING AND MIRACLES, HAS REVEALED RESURRECTION AND LIFE. Many have stood beside an open grave and felt obliged to ask the question, Shall we ever see our friend again? Nature can give no satisfying answer, and reason can only form conjectures and suggest probabilities. But amid the silence of nature and the helplessness of reason, a voice has spoken and a light was shone from heaven, for Christ has brought life and immortality to light. The great fact He clearly revealed in words--The hour is coming, etc.--and in His works of raising. No one ever died in the presence of the Prince of Life, and no dead body ever remained dead when He approached it.

II. CHRIST AS PRIEST HAS REDEEMED HIS PEOPLE FROM SIN AND PURCHASED FOR THEM ETERNAL LIFE. The only cause of death is sin. That has exposed us to Divine wrath, and brought upon us the sentence of death. The wages of sin is death; and those wages must be paid. But Christ has paid them by the shedding of His precious blood. The strength of sin is the law and the law has been completely satisfied by the sacrifice of Calvary. In proof that His satisfaction was perfect, Christ rose. God sent His angel to roll away the stone, and set our Surety free. Believing in Christ, our sins are taken from us and reckoned to His account. And if sin be taken away, all is taken away that can make death terrible. Death now comes to a believer, not as an executioner of the broken law, but as the messenger of heavenly peace. Whosoever liveth and believeth in Me, etc.

III. CHRIST AS KING GIVES HIS PEOPLE THE VICTORY OVER DEATH AND BRINGS THEM AT LAST INTO THE ACTUAL POSSESSION OF ETERNAL LIFE. His own victory over the grave is a proof and pledge of ours. As our representative, He encountered the king of terrors in his own dark domain; and though He continued under the power of death for a time, yet He saw no corruption, and came forth a Conqueror. In this victory we are destined to share by living union to Him; and therefore, in our coming conflict, we can say, Thanks be to God who giveth us the victory, etc. And the reason of it is, not only because He died and rose, but also because He is alive for evermore; and not only alive, but invested with all power in heaven and earth. He must reign, etc.; and therefore death, the last enemy, shall be destroyed, like the rest. (John Thomson, D. D.)

I. THE RESURRECTION. Note

Christ the Resurrection and the Life

1. The authority with which these words are spoken. I am, not I will be, the instrument at some future time, but the thing itself. Surely no creature could speak thus. He speaks just as a king would speak to whom it never occurred that anyone should doubt of his royalty, or that he needed to vaunt of his power. The words assume a supreme and essential power over life and death. His was the original gift of life; His the right to dissolve its organisation, and to confer it again; and, therefore, He only could be the opener of the world of graves. This is the exclusive prerogative of Godhead. Mans power is mighty, but it steps short of this. He can from a fossil bone construct a massive elephant, and, with Promethean ambition, he can shape its features faultlessly, and by clockwork or galvanism simulate life; but he cannot breathe the living fire. Am I God, said the frightened king, to kill and to make alive? The resurrection is a marvel and a mystery till we bring in the thought of God. Why should it be thought a thing incredible that God, etc.

2. But not only do the words affirm Christs divinity, but that through Him only resurrection came to man.

(1) Resurrection implies death, and death was not among the original arrangements of the universe. It came in after the very good had been pronounced. There must needs be, therefore, some provision to counteract its effects, and to restore the forfeited heritage of immortality to man. This has been secured by the vicarious atonement of Jesus. He bore the penalty on the cross, and, through death, destroyed Him who had the power of death. Christ is the Resurrection, therefore its Source and Spring, Author and Finisher. When He emerged from the tomb, He brought life and immortality with Him. The pearls of the deep sea, awaiting the plunge of the diver, the treasures before lying in the dark mine, were by Him seized and brought up to the light of day.

(2) But we must not limit the import of our term, and exclude the idea of a spiritual resurrection--not only a raised body, but a soul bursting from the tomb of its corruption, and blooming into newness of life. It is remarkable that, although all men inherit immortality, the future of the wicked is never dignified with the name of life. Everlasting contempt and destruction are the terms which Scripture uses. They shall not see life. A sinner breathes in physical, thinks in intellectual, feels in emotional, but is destitute of spiritual life. But the Christian becomes, by faith in Christ, dead unto sin, but alive unto God--passes from death into life.

II. THE LIFE. Christ is the true God and Eternal Life, and His culminating promise is even eternal life. What is this?

1. Conscious life. In all ages men have bewildered themselves by speculations as to the mode of their future existence. Some have taken refuge in dark materialism; others have held to transmigration of souls. Their inability to conceive of the spirit existing apart from the body was at the root of it all; and modern theorizers, perplexed by the same, have endeavoured to get out of it by teaching that the soul shall sleep till the body shall rise. But I am not disposed to give grim death an advantage over the Diviner part of man. If for ages He can paralyse the soul, then Christ has gained only a partial triumph. When Paul had a desire to depart, etc., was it for better that his mighty mind should cease its thinking, his heart be still, and his energies be powerless for a long cycle of years? Far better a protracted existence on earth. He knew full well that the moment he was released he would be in conscious enjoyment of Christ. The paradise of believers is like the heaven it adjoins, undeluged with a wave of woe. The dungeon of the impenitent is like the hell which it approximates, unvisited with one ray of hope. There is no human soul from the days of Adam that is not alive today.

2. Social life. Heaven is not a solitude; it is a peopled city, in which there are no strangers, no homeless, no poor. It is not good for man to be alone means something deeper than the family tie: it is an essential want which the Creator in His highest wisdom has impressed on the noblest of His works. The idea of sociality is comprehensive of the idea of the fulness of life. That is not life where the hermit drags out a solitary existence. All kinds of life tend to companionship, from the buzzing insect cloud up to man. Not only, therefore, did Christ pray that those who had been given Him should be with Him, but they are to come to the general assembly of the firstborn, etc. Take comfort, then, your dear ones are only lost to present sight. (W. M. Punshon, LL. D.)

Christ the Resurrection and the Life

1. The terms are not synonymous. When Christ says I am the Life, He claims an attribute of God. None but God is the Life, and can impart it. I am the Resurrection implies that He can keep life when given, and restore it after it is lost. These powers measure the difference between the finite and the infinite. Of the myriad of insects that flutter in the sunshine, or that the microscope reveals in a drop of water, where is the man that with all his art can create so much as one? Much more hopeless to work in the atmosphere of the grave.

2. Note that Christ does not say I produce, or I confer. The text is a member of a magnificent series of I ams, and the quality claimed is not anything that can be separated from Christ; it is not what He has, but what He is. The sun does not need to go anywhere for light, nor the ocean for water. As the Father hath life in Himself, etc.

I. Christ as THE RESURRECTION, or the restorer of lost life of every kind, not merely of the body.

1. Of the life forfeited by transgression. The wages of sin is death.

(1) It is a dismal thing to know this. It is as if a person, feeling breathless at times, were on describing his symptoms to be told by a physician that he was suffering from heart disease.

(2) It is more terrible to know that it ought to be so, that he deserves

2. Can anything be more bitter than when through meanness a man deserves the social reproach he gets? Yes; the consciousness of loathsomeness in the sight of God.

(3) But the gift of God is eternal life, etc. United to Christ by faith we get the blessing as He bore the curse. You may say that such deliverance is only partial, that it is a worse thing to deserve death than to suffer it. A substitute may deliver us from death, but not from the disgrace of having deserved it. Granted; but God will never remind the pardoned sinner of his sin, and it will not diminish the cordiality of his reception in heaven. He will be covered with Christs righteousness.

2. Of a life of purity, order, and holy beauty. Can it be necessary to prove that such a resurrection is needed? May we not find in a little child something to condemn us? And the first effect of our receiving Christ is to become as little children, having their purity without their weakness, their simplicity without their ignorance, their trust without their forgetfulness. Or have you not been shamed in reading the life of some saintly man or woman. We cannot of ourselves soar to these heights; but Jesus, the fountain of goodness, has come to restore this life too. But why confine ourselves to human excellence? To know what it is to live study the life of Jesus. Fairer than the children of men. This life may be ours. I live, yet not I, etc. When Christ who is our life, etc.

3. Of holy fellowship with God. We have left our Fathers house and lost all liking for it. But there can be no happiness for us in the far off country. This life is not to be regained by thinking reverently of God, or poring over other mens love to Him in hope of getting into the same current. In welcoming Christ, and in that only, can I say, O Lord, Thou art my God.

II. Christ as THE LIFE. It is His office to continue what He restores, Whosoever liveth, etc.

1. If Jesus simply gave you life, and then left you to sink or swim, there can be no doubt what the issue would be. The life that we now live in the flesh must be by the faith of the Son of God.

2. He will watch and guard your faith, as He did Simons, that it fail not.

3. Beyond the grave the gift assumes a new character of glory, worthy of Him from whom it comes. The soul is made perfect in holiness, and the body will be fashioned like unto Christs glorious body. It is no longer a struggling but a steady life, like that of a plant which has at last found its proper soil and congenial atmosphere. When you think of eternal life think of

(1) The home of the soul and body.

(2) The intellect ever advancing in clearness and mastery.

(3) The emotions now in perfect order, growing perpetually in strength and sensibility.

(4) A love forever deepening its roots and enlarging its compass.

(5) The best fellowships yielding forever new harvests of enjoyment. Think of all this. And you have but the dimmest shadow of what eye hath not seen, etc.

III. IF ALL THIS BE TRUE, IS IT NOT STRANGE THAT CHRIST IS NOT MORE WIDELY WELCOMED? What do men prize so much as life? All that a man hath, etc. But for what life? For his animal life--the mere link between body and soul? What a strange thing that the higher you go in the scale of life the less do men care for it! And when you reach the highest life the indifference becomes aversion. Ye will not come unto Me, etc. (W. G.Blaikie, D. D.)

Christ, both Resurrection and Life

There is a glorious harmony in the words Resurrection and Life. Either of them alone would be insufficient, combined they are divinely satisfying. If Christ had said only, I am the Resurrection, without promising to bestow a new spiritual life, He would have told us merely of misery. To rise again into the life we have now, with its struggle, and care, and failure--to repeat it age after age--what were this but perpetual conflict and everlasting unrest? Or if He had said merely, I am the Life, without saying I am the Resurrection, we should still be of all men most miserable. For if He had given us new spiritual life in the love of God, without raising us after death, we should have been haunted with grand hopes and infinite aspirations that were destined never to be fulfilled. Christ combines the two, and therefore He tells us, There is in me a life which, by dying, rises to its perfection; and therefore death is no more death, but resurrection to the fulness of life. (E. L. Hull, B. A.)

The mystery of the resurrection

How shall the dead arise is no question of my faith; to believe only possibilities is not faith but mere philosophy. Many things are true in divinity which are neither inducible by reason or confirmable by sense, and many things in philosophy confirmable by sense yet not inducible by reason. (Sir T. Browne.)

Natural analogies of the resurrection

In New Sharon, in the state of Michigan, a child of great promise sickened and died. The little one, all beautiful, robed for the grave, was laid in its coffin, and in its little hand was placed a bouquet of flowers--the central flower of which was an unopened bud of the Rose of Sharon. On the morning for burial the coffin lid was removed for the sorrowing weepers to take their farewell look at the peaceful dead; when, lo! that bud had become a full-blown rose, while grasped in the dead childs hand. That beautiful flower seemed to say, Weep not for the spirit that is gone, in heaven it now appears, and is forever with the Lord. (J. Wilson.)

Christ lives

One of the women encountered the vanquished army returning to Medina. Where is my father? asked she of the soldiers. He is slain, was the reply. And my husband? Slain also. And my son? Slain, with them, said they. But Mahomet? He is here alive, replied the warriors. Very well, said she, apostrophising the prophet; since thou livest still, all our misfortunes are as nothing. (Lamartine.)

The philosophy of Christian hope

I. THE BASIS OF THIS HOPE. How shall man be quite sure of a life beyond this?

1. By the resurrection of Christ. Christian hope differs from all other in that it rests neither upon any instinct of the heart, any inference from reason, or any promise sent from heaven, but upon a person. One is set before us who, born into the world, and living our chequered human life, has achieved victory over death. It is conceivable that this is not sufficient to assure us of our resurrection. We might argue that it is an exceptional distinction merited by a perfect character. And if Christ were only man the argument would have force. But His incarnation gives its proper significance to His resurrection. He is not a unit of the race singled out for favour, but one who, as equal with the Father, has power and right to take up the manhood into God. He took our nature, and therefore in all He does and is our nature has a share, that He might redeem, purify, exalt it. He did not merely reverse the sentence of death by an arbitrary annulling of it, but by the actual victory of life over death in the same nature which had become subject unto death. He thus became a quickening Spirit.

2. By the communication of the life of Christ to all who believe in Him.

(1) Jesus is the Resurrection because He is the Life, and He imparts that life to us. Because I live, etc. There is a sense in which the resurrection is begun here, because the germ of it is found in every renewed nature. A power has been put forth on man which must issue in His glorification. The resurrection, though sometimes described as a gift, is also to be regarded as the necessary development of the work of grace (Joh_5:26; Joh_6:57). Of the two-fold life of the Spirit here and the body hereafter, Christ is the source (Joh_10:17), and by communion with Him only is it sustained Joh_6:51-54). That which is spiritual is in its very nature eternal. Death is but as the episode of a sleep. So essential is the connection between the life eternal and the resurrection that there are only two places in the New Testament in which the resurrection of the wicked is mentioned (chap. 5:29; Act_24:15).

(2) Sometimes the same truth is associated with the indwelling in our hearts of a Divine Person (Col_1:27; Rom_8:11). The resurrection follows from such inhabitation; those bodies, in which He has vouchsafed to make His tabernacle, are not destined to be left in corruption. If Christ sent the Holy Ghost to make our bodies His temple, then that Divine Visitant sheds His sanctifying influences upon the whole man. Every member of the body, eye, ear, hand, foot, all have been consecrated to Gods service. One part of our nature is not left to curse and barrenness whilst the dew of heaven falls richly on the other.

II. SUCH A HOPE, CONSISTENT IN ITSELF AND SATISFYING THE DEEPEST NEEDS OF OUR NATURE, ESSENTIALLY DIFFERS FROM AND TRANSCENDS ALL PRE-CHRISTIAN HOPE.

1. What was the hope of the wisest pagan philosophers? At most a bare hope of continuance after death. But Christ gives us now the life that cannot die in the body that the body may be consecrated to God. Our souls and bodies are His, filled and pervaded with His life, and can never, therefore, perish.

2. What was the hope of the Jew? Kindling with ecstasy it rose above time and death, and laid its hand upon God with the conviction that He who was the Life of His children would be their portion forever. But the Jew had still the horror of death unvanquished, of the grave from which none had ever returned. The Christian is partaker of the Life of God which in human flesh overcame death, and therefore has the sure pledge that he will overcome.

III. THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE RESURRECTION COMMENDS ITSELF AS IN HARMONY WITH THE FACTS OF OUR NATURE. All experience shows how close is the union between soul and body. So far as observation extends, the material organism is destroyed by death, and yet as by an imperious necessity it enters into all our conceptions of another life: we would not be unclothed but clothed upon. Does not all thought become action only through the instrumentality of the body? and does not the body express the beauty or ugliness of the unseen dweller within? How often, even after the soul has fled, there remains on the cold features of the corpse the living impress of that soul, as if it disputed the empire of death? It is almost as if the body were waiting for the return of its tenant?

IV. THE SPECULATIVE DIFFICULTIES WHICH BESET THE DOCTRINE. How are the dead raised up, etc. The particles of which the body is composed may be scattered, and enter into the formation of plants, animals, men. How can each particle be disentangled and brought together again? We put no limits on the power of God. But such a process is as unnecessary as improbable. The same body may be raised though no single particle of the present body be found in it. What is necessary to the identity of the body? Not the identity of its material particles. These are in a state of perpetual flux. The body of our childhood is not the body of our youth, etc., and yet it is the same body in patriarch and infant. The only thing that we need to be assured is that the principle of identity, which governs the formation of the body in this life, shall govern it at the Resurrection. What, then, is this thing that remains ever the same, which never perishes in all the changes of the material organism? It escapes all our investigations; we only see its manifestations; but that it is a reality all observation goes to show: and if, through all the changes of the body during this life, this principle continues in force, why may it not survive the shock of death? Why may not the same body, which was sown a natural body, be raised a spiritual body? There is everything in the analogies of nature to confirm it. (Dean Perowne.)

Though He were dead.--View the text

I. AS A STREAM OF COMFORT TO MARTHA AND OTHER BEREAVED PERSONS.

1. The presence of Jesus means life and resurrection. But what comfort is Christs spiritual presence to us? He will not raise our loved ones? I answer that Jesus is able at this moment to do so. But do you wish it? Yes. Now, consider. Surely you are not so cruel as to wish the glorified back to care and pain. Lazarus could return and fill his place again, but not one in ten thousand could do so. I had rather that Christ should keep the keys of death than I. It would be too dreadful a privilege to be empowered to rob heaven of the perfect merely to give pleasure to the imperfect. Jesus would raise them now if He knew it to be right.

2. When Jesus comes the dead shall live, and living believers shall not die, we shall all be changed.

3. Even now Christs dead are alive. They appear to die, but they are not in the grave, but with the Lord. God is not the God of the dead, etc.

4. Even now His living do not die. There is a difference between the death of the godly and the ungodly. To the latter it comes as a penal infliction, to the former a summons to his Fathers palace. Death is ours, and follows life in the list of our possessions as an equal favour.

II. AS A GREAT DEEP OF COMFORT FOR ALL BELIEVERS.

1. Christ is the Life of His people. We are dead by nature, but regeneration is the result of contact with Christ; We are begotten again unto living hope by His resurrection. He is not only the Resurrection to begin with, but the Life to go on with. Anything beyond the circle of Christ is death.

2. Faith is the only channel by which we can draw from Jesus our life. He that believeth in Me, not he that loves, serves or imitates Me. You want to conduct the electric fluid, and so you have to find a metal which will not create any action of its own: if it did so it would disturb the current. Now, faith is an empty handed receiver and communicator; it is nothing apart from that on which it relies, and therefore it is suitable to be a conductor for grace.

3. To the reception of Christ by faith there is no limit--Whosoever, however wrong, weak, unfeeling, hopeless.

4. The believer shall never die. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

Christs treatment of death

1. It is only from great inspired natures that we get such contradictory words as these. In one breath Christ says that if a man dies and believes in Him, he shall live; and in the next breath He says that whosoever lives and believes in Him shall not die. Yet every docile reader feels that it contains a truth too subtle to be grasped with words. When the strata of rocks are twisted and upturned, the miner looks for gold, deeming that in the convulsions that so disposed them, a vein of precious metal may have been thrown up from the lower deep.

2. In order to get at their meaning, we must keep in mind that Christ was drawing comfort for these afflicted friends, not from the old sources, but Himself. Martha has expressed her faith in the common doctrine, but Christ passes over it as though it had little power to console. It is a far off event and hardly touches the present fact of death. So little power had it that Martha did not think of it till led to it by Christs question. Gods love may wait patient through ages, because ages are nothing to Him, but human love is impatient, because it is under finite conditions. Our children, that we could hardly bear out of our sight, die, and it is small comfort that ages hence they and we shall live again; and so, instead of dwelling on that, we cling to the form and mementos spared by death, and keep alive the past instead of making alive the present. Christ strove to give more substantial comfort.

I. His first purpose was TO GET THEIR MINDS AWAY FROM DEATH. There is but one natural fact to which Christ showed antipathy. He set the whole weight of His thought and speech against what was known as death. There is a fine significance in His indisposition to use the word. He said that the daughter of Jairus was asleep, and said the same about Lazarus till the dulness of the disciples forced Him to use the ordinary word. The early believers, fully taught by the resurrection of Christ, caught at once the remembered hints, and said that Stephen fell asleep. So St. Paul many times over, and St. Peter, and the Christians in the Catacombs. If Christ had done nothing more than give this word, He would have been the greatest of benefactors. To that which seems the worst thing He has given the best name, and the name is true. Amongst the profoundest words of Shakespeare are those in which he speaks of sleep as great Natures second course. In a profounder sense the sleep of death ushers in the second course of nature, even the life that shall never know death nor sleep.

II. His next purpose is TO GET THEM TO IDENTIFY HIMSELF WITH THE RESURRECTION. Martha has spoken of a general resurrection--not necessarily a spiritual fact--a mere matter of destiny. Christ draws it near, vitalizes it, puts it into the category of faith, and connects it with Himself. Faith in Him works away from death towards life. To believe in a person is to be like him. Christ is Life, and could not be holden of death; faith in Him works towards the same freedom. The assimilating power of faith is a recognized principle. We meet men in whose faces we see imprinted avarice, lust, or conceit. They have so long thought and felt under the power of those qualities that they are made over into their image. The Hindu who worships Brahma, sleeping in the stars in immovable calm, gets to wear a fixed impression. So Christ brings men to believe in Him in order to become like Him, and if like Him, then one with Him, sharers of His nature and destiny, and if one with Him then His life is theirs. And yet the fact and process of death remain. Yes, man needs for his supreme development to undergo the supreme experience, which is death. But in Christ this is to die to some purpose, to lay down life to take it again. It is of unspeakable moment that the whole matter of Christian believing and living is summed up as life--existence in the perfect fulfilment and enjoyment of all relations. We transport the matter into some future world; Christ puts it into the hour that now is. And so life is the single theme of Christ. We can so conceive one as so one with Christ as to have little sense of yesterday and tomorrow, to care little for one world above another, to heed death as little as sleep, because filled with the life of God. It is towards this high state that Christ conducts us, sowing in our hearts day by day the seed of eternal life--truth, and love, and purity.

III. THE SUBJECT LEAVES US WITH TWO LEADING EXPRESSIONS.

1. Comfort in view of the change called death. Christ does not strive to annihilate Marthas grief, but to infuse it with another spirit. As Jesus wept, so we would not have love shed one tear less; but there are tears too bitter for human eyes--tears of despair; and there are tears which reflect heavens light and promise as they fall--tears of hope. Christ takes away from death its sting by taking away the sin of which it is the shadow. Aside from this we may approach death as sleep, a grateful ordinance of nature, not dreading it, not longing for it, but accepting it as Gods good way--a step in life.

2. A new sense of the value of faith in Christ. It is no small thing to be delivered from false views of death. Consider the hopeless views of the heathen, and the vague hope of the Jews. There is no certainty till we come to Christ, and no deliverance from fear except through faith in Him. (T. T.Munger.)

The consolation of the text

It makes the lych gate through which the dead enter the churchyard as the Beautiful Gate of the Temple, a glorious arch of hope and triumph. (J. Culross, D. D.)

A soldier who was wounded at Inkerman managed to crawl away from the place where he fell, and ultimately reached his tent. When he was found he was on his face. Beneath him was the sacred volume, and on its open page his hand rested. When his hand was lifted it was found to be glued by his lifes blood to the book. The letters of the page were printed on his hand and read, I am the Resurrection and the Life, etc. It was with this verse still inscribed on his hand that he was laid in a soldiers grave. (New Handbook of Illustrations.)

Whosoever liveth and believeth in Me shall never die.--This saying points to mysteries which have occupied the thoughts of Eastern and also of Western philosophers, as the famous verses of Euripides show: Who knoweth if to live be truly death, and death be reckoned life by those below? and indicates a higher form of corporate life, such as St. Paul expresses by the phrase, in Christ (Gal_2:20; Col_3:4). Part of the thought is expressed in a saying in the Talmud, What has man to do that he may live? Let him die. What has man to do that he may die? Let him live. The last words of Edward the Confessor offer a closer parallel. Weep not, I shall not die but live; and as I leave the land of the dying I trust to see the blessings of the Lord in the land of the living. (Bp. Westcott.)

Death avoided

If we truly believe in Christ

I. THE HEALTHY ACTIVITY OF OUR SPIRITUAL POWERS WILL NEVER CEASE. Life is worthless without activity, and activity without health is misery. By faith in Christ the perceptive, reflective, imaginative, recollective, anticipative faculties will work harmoniously forever.

II. NOTHING VALUABLE IN OUR SPIRITUAL ACQUISITIONS EVER BE LOST. Life without ideas, emotions, memories, habits, is a blank, and with these, if they are not of a virtuous character, it is despicable and wretched. But when they are holy life is blessed. Faith in Christ secures their permanence and perfection. Our works follow us. We cannot labour in vain in the Lord.

III. ALL THE SOURCES OF TRUE PLEASURE WILL CONTINUE FOREVER: intellectual study, etc.; social--friendship, usefulness, etc.; religious--communion with God, worship. Faith in Christ, then, not in propositions concerning Him, but in Him as the loving Son of God and Saviour, is a condition of happy immortality. (D. Thomas, D. D.)

Believeth thou this?

Believing!

The earnest and compassionate look cast upon Martha is the look cast upon us as we are asked this question. Who in his reflective moods does not acknowledge the importance whether the answer is yes or no? Who does not want to be established in solid convictions. But there is a difficulty at the very entrance of the subject. What is it to believe? and how? But this is no real difficulty to practical men. To believe in a proposition is to be persuaded of its truth. It admits of degrees. It may shine like the sun in clear assurance, or be overcast with the wet atmosphere of thought; but still it is the light we are appointed to walk by. We are every day believing what we cannot prove. Our text lays no injunction, but simply asks a question: Believest thou? We ought to know whether we do or not.

I. WE HAVE FAITH IN SOME OF ITS LOWER DEGREES AT LEAST, and every degree is precious. We believe in something of the truth revealed in the Bible, too inadequately perhaps, and with reason to cry out, Help Thou my unbelief; or else we are utter sceptics. Which is it?

II. EVERY DEGREE TOWARDS THE HIGHEST AND FULLEST ASSURANCE IS PRECIOUS. This is certainly true so far as the comfort and peace of the mind are concerned, and what can be more important?

1. That it should be nourished with Divine truths.

2. Confirmed with spiritual assurances.

3. Near healing words of heavenly compassion.

4. Be protected against the agitations of doubt and dread.

III. IT IS SURPRISING, THEREFORE, THAT IT SHOULD BE SAID THAT IT IS OF LITTLE CONSEQUENCE WHAT A MAN BELIEVES PROVIDED HE CONDUCTS HIMSELF WELL. A principal point is overlooked, the need of the soul to be cheered and kept in the harmony of its own thoughts. One may be a very dutiful man, and yet a very restless and despairing one.

IV. ONES BELIEF MUST HAVE SOME INFLUENCE ON CONDUCT. His convictions must be a part of the basis of his character, if not of the very character itself. Human beliefs are of grave moment, and determine the behaviour, and faith in Christ from the first has been the means of changing sinful hearts. But I must look at the need of the troubled mind and heart to find satisfaction and rest. Who can allow himself to be indifferent or unassured when the highest realities are to be treasured up in reverent acknowledgment or else slighted and mistrusted.

V. TAKE THE DIRECT QUESTION OF OUR LORD. Believest thou that whosoever hath a living faith in Me shall never die? AND MARTHAS RESPONSE, I believe that Thou art He who should come into the world. She stopped there. With a like consciousness of ignorance and weakness we may place ourselves at the feet of the great Teacher.

1. There is a Father, wiser than you can comprehend, better than you deserve, just, merciful, forgiving--believest thou this?

2. There is a heavenly providence--the Fathers care--believest thou this?

3. There is a better abode for the soul--the Fathers house.

4. There is sure retribution.

Finally: If we should be urged with questions too difficult let us prepare ourselves in Marthas spirit. I believe in every doctrine and promise, so far as it is made plain to me, of the Saviour that was gent into the world. (N. L.Frotheringham.)

The believer catechized

When believers are sorrowful they may be sure that a consolation is provided exactly adapted to their cases. For every lock God has made He has provided a key. I doubt not that for every disease there is a remedy in Gods laboratory if we could but find it, and if we Christians are borne down by excessive sorrow it arises from a defect in our faith. This defect sometimes arises from

1. Slender knowledge. There is a promise that meets your case, and you know nothing of its efficacy because you have never read or understood it.

2. Want of appreciation of the person of Christ. This was the case with Martha. If Jesus were better known our burdens would be lightened. Submit then to a heart-searching inquiry. Believest thou

I. THIS PARTICULAR DOCTRINE? You have faith in the Scriptures in general. Now the point is to take each separate doctrine, and look over it in detail, and then say with heart and conscience, I believe this. Martha had already expressed her faith in certain great truths--in the Saviours power to heal the sick, in the efficacy of His prayer, and in the certainty of the resurrection--but all these were very general, and Christ set before her a specific fact, and said, Believest thou this? Let us do the same with the election of grace, justification by faith, union with Christ, etc. This inquiry wen managed and pressed home will enlarge the range and strengthen the grasp of faith and enrich the soul.

II. THIS DISTINCT DOCTRINE? There is great cloudiness about the faith of many, arising largely from its second-hand character. We believe not because we have personally grasped a truth, but because somebody else believes it. Instead of the hazy notion of the resurrection which Martha held in common with others, Christ challenged her faith on a crisp, definite teaching about Himself. Christian doctrines, the atonement, e.g., are robbed of half their delight if indistinctly stated. Read Isa_53:1-12, and then say to yourself, Believest thou this?

III. THIS DIFFICULT TRUTH. Certain truths are hard to grasp. There are points about them which stagger faith till faith rises to her true character. What Christ preached to Martha seemed contrary to experience. But when we become Christians and once accept an incarnate God, no difficulty need trouble us. Everything is simple in the presence of that profound mystery. Believing then in the Incarnation, what difficulty should there be in believing when thou passest through the fire, etc.?

IV. THIS TRUTH AS IT STANDS CONNECTED WITH CHRIST. Martha believed there would be a resurrection, but Jesus says, I am, etc. It is one thing to believe a doctrine, and another to believe it as embodied in the person of Christ. There the comfort lies. Martha was called upon to believe in Christs personal power, His present power, and the union of His people with Him.

V. THIS TRUTH WHICH IS APPLICABLE TO THYSELF NOW. This was where Martha fell short. We sometimes receive great truths, but are staggered by lesser truths, because the great truth has no present practical bearing, whereas the lesser one has. You believe that Christs blood can wash away all sin, do you believe that it cleanses yours? You believe that all things work together for good, do you believe that your present affliction does?

VI. THIS PRACTICAL TRUTH. Martha said she believed it, but verse 39 did not prove it. Coleridge says: Truths, of all ethers, the most awful and mysterious, and at the same time of universal interest, are too often considered as so true that they lose all the power of truth, and lie bedridden in the dormitory of the soul, side by side with the most despised and exploded errors. Why are people better than their creed? For the same reason that others are worse than their creed, because their creed is asleep. There is a house on fire--you believe it, but you dont stir until you know it is your own. We believe that God hears prayer, but, nothing surprises us more than when He answers it. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

Faith, not understanding, brings us the blessing

He saith not, Understandest thou this? For the mysteries of religion, saith Rupertus, are much better understood by believing than believed by understanding. (J. Trapp.)

I believe that Thou art the Christ, the Son of God

Marthas creed

I. The GUIDE of her faith, the WORD of Christ.

II. The GROUND of her faith, the AUTHORITY of Christ.

III. The MATTER of her faith, that Jesus was

1. The Christ.

2. The Son of God.

3. The One who should come. (M. Henry.)

All that can be believed and known of Jesus is included in this threefold statement, which looks towards three possible sides: to the history of salvation, to the fellowship of salvation, and to the need and hope of salvation. We might say that the first names the theme of St. Matthews Gospel, the third the theme of St. Lukes, and the second the theme of St. Johns. And that which in the higher combination of the scattered points is the theme of the fourth Gospel, is in direct generality and unity the theme also of the second. (C. E. Luthardt, D. D.)

The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Joh 11:17-19. When Jesus came, he found — When Jesus and his disciples were come nigh to Bethany, they were told by some of the inhabitants, whom, it seems, they met accidentally, that Lazarus had been buried four days. Therefore, as a day or two must have been spent in making preparation for the burial, he could not well be less than five days dead when Jesus arrived. Now Bethany — The place where Lazarus had lived; was nigh unto Jerusalem, about fifteen furlongs off — Or somewhat less than two miles: so that he was well known in the city, had many friends there; and many of the Jews, who dwelt there, came to Martha and Mary — When the funeral was over; that they might comfort them — In their trouble for the loss of their brother. “The evangelist mentions the vicinity of Bethany to Jerusalem, and speaks of the company of friends that were with the two sisters, to show that by the direction of Providence this great miracle had many witnesses, some of whom were persons of note, and inhabitants of Jerusalem.”

Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

B. The raising of Lazarus. The trial and victory of faith at the open grave. The heart of Jesus. The glory of the God of Israel and the glory of Jesus united in a glorious work, for a sign for the Jews from Jerusalem

(Joh_11:17-44)

17Then when Jesus came, he found that he had lain [been] in the grave four days already.17 18Now Bethany was nigh unto [near] Jerusalem, about fifteen furlongs 19off: And [But]18 many of the Jews came [had come, ἐληλύθεισαν] to Martha and Mary,19 to comfort them concerning their brother [the brother, π. τοῦ ἀδελφοῦ].20 20Then Martha, as soon as she heard that Jesus was coming, went and met him [when she heard that Jesus was coming, went to meet him]: but Mary sat still 21[omit still] in the house. Then said Martha unto Jesus, Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died.21 22But I know, that even now [And even now I know that]22 whatsoever thou wilt [mayest] ask of God, God will give it 23thee [will give to thee]. Jesus saith to her, Thy brother shall [will] rise again. 24Martha saith unto him, I know that he shall [will] rise again in the resurrection 25[of all] at the last day. Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead [should die], yet shall he [he will] 26live: And whosoever [every one that] liveth and believeth in me shall never die 27[lit: will not die for ever, οὐ μὴ ἀποθάνῃ εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα]. Believest thou this? She saith unto him, Yea, Lord: I believe [have believed, become a believer]23 that thou art the Christ, the Son of God, which should come [who cometh] into the world. 28And when she had so said [having said this] she went her way [away] and called Mary her sister secretly, saying, The Master is come [is here, πάρεστι], and calleth for (omit for] thee. 29As soon as she heard that [it], she arose quickly, and came24 unto him. 30Now Jesus was [had] not yet come into the town, but was [still] in that 31[the] place where Martha [had] met him. The Jews then [therefore] which [who] were with her in the house, and comforted [were comforting, παραμυθούμενοι] her, when they saw Mary, that she [saw that Mary] rose up hastily and went out, followed her, saying, She goeth unto the grave [thinking25 that she was going to the tomb] to weep there. 32Then when Mary was come where Jesus was, and saw him [Mary therefore, when she came … seeing him, or, as soon as she saw him], she fell down at his feet, saying unto him, Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died [comp. Joh_11:21-22]. 33When Jesus therefore saw her weeping, and the Jews also weeping which [who] came with her, he groaned [ἐνεβριμήσατο, was deeply and indignantly moved, stirred up26] in the [his] spirit, and was troubled [troubled himself, ἐτάραξεν ἑαυτόν], 34And said, Where have ye laid him? They say unto him, Lord, come and see.

35Jesus wept.

36, 37Then said the Jews, Behold how he loved him! And [But] some of them said, Could not this man, which [he who] opened the eyes of the blind [man, τοῦ τυφλοῦ, 38see chap. 9] have caused that even this man should not have died [die]? Jesus therefore again groaning in [deeply moved within] himself cometh to the grave 39[tomb]. It was a cave, and a stone lay upon it [against it]. Jesus. said [saith] Take ye [omit ye] away the stone. Martha, the sister of him that was dead,27 saith unto him, Lord, by this time he stinketh:28 for he hath been dead four days 40[he hath his four days]. Jesus saith unto her, Said I not [Did I not say] unto thee, that, if thou wouldest [omit wouldest] believe, thou shouldest [shall] see the glory of God?

41Then they took away the stone from the place where the dead was laid [omit from the place where the dead was laid].29 And Jesus lifted up his [the] eyes [to heaven, 42or upward, ἄνω] and said, Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard me. And [Yet] I knew that thou hearest me always: but because of the people [for the sake of the multitude] which stand by [around] I said it, that they may [might] believe that thou hast sent [didst send] me. 43And when he thus had [had thus] spoken, he cried [out] with a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth.

44And he that was dead [the dead man] came forth, bound hand and foot with graveclothes; and his face was bound about with a napkin. Jesus saith unto them, Loose him, and let him go.

EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL

Joh_11:17. Four days already.—Jesus comes into the vicinity of the place and learns that Lazarus has already been buried four days. The journey from Peræa to Bethany is estimated at ten hours,—a day’s. journey. One day, therefore, is consumed by His journey, two days by His stay in Peræa after the receipt of the message, and still another day by the journey of the messenger. Hence it results that Lazarus, who, in conformity to the Jewish custom, was buried on the day of his death, died shortly after the departure of the messenger, or while he was preparing to depart. The first and last days enter into the computation as parts of days. And so, when Lazarus died, his sisters must have known, with perfect certainty, that their messenger had not yet reached the Lord, or, at all events, that Jesus could not so soon be with them. They could not, therefore, with the feeling common to humanity, attribute the death of Lazarus to any delay on the part of Jesus; on the contrary, it is far more probable that they reproached themselves with delay in despatching the messenger. But this very trait, like their timid message, finds its explanation in the condition of affairs; they were well aware of the peril involved in His coming. Be it also observed that plain-spoken Martha says: “If Thou hadst been here, my brother had not died,”—and not: “if Thou hadst come sooner.”

Joh_11:18. About fifteen furlongs (stadia) off [ὡς ἀπὸ σταδίων δεκαπέντε].—A stadium (ατάδιος and in the classics also στάδιον) a distance of 125 paces. The fifteen stadia about three-quarters of an hour [about two miles]. Ancient construction (Tholuck): Trajection of the preposition ἀπό, which relates to Jerusalem. In opposition to this, Winer, [p. 518]: The ἀπό designates the locality beyond the fifteen stadia, and is to be considered as referring to the stadia. The latter construction seems far-fetched.30 The short distance is mentioned in order to account for the presence in Bethany of so many Jews from Jerusalem. The use of the preterite (Bethany was) is to be explained by its connection with the historical narrative.

Joh_11:19. Many of the Jews,—i.e. not necessarily members of the Sanhedrin (Joh_11:46), but people of Pharisaic or Judaistic views. Possibly they wished to regain this family in the absence of Jesus, whose friendship for them may have been known. However, many of the kindred of the family may have been among these Jews and we have no grounds for representing all who came to condole with them as miserable comforters.

To Martha and Mary. Πρὸς τὰς περί M. κ. M. Properly, to the two sisters, with the persons about them. According to later Greek usage it might be indicative simply of the two sisters. “But the New Testament contains no instance of its use in this sense and there is here an especial decorum in the expression, since those who came to them were men. It reveals, moreover, an establishment of the better class.” (Meyer).31 But the more obvious and definite allusion is, probably, to the company of mourners and wailing women.

To comfort them.—The conventional condolences and consolations lasted seven days, according to 1Sa_31:13; 1Ch_10:12; Maimonides, De luctu, cap. xiii.; Lightfoot [pp. 107 sqq.], and others.

Joh_11:20. Then Martha, when she heard, etc.—She appears as mistress of the house and receives the message. She goes without delay to meet the Lord and does not first communicate the sews to Mary; Joh_11:28 also leads us to suppose that such was the case (Meyer in opposition to Tholuck).—But Mary sat in the (interior of the) house; “because, according to Geier, De luctu Hebr. [pp. 210 sqq.] and others, it was the custom to be seated in receiving condolences,” or “sitting was a part of the mourning rite with the Greeks and Hebrews.” But certainly not for this reason alone. The different conduct of the two sisters in our Gospel is in perfect accordance with the characters in Luk_10:38-42. [This agreement between two Gospels so widely different is no small proof of the historical character of the two sisters. Both loved our Lord, but Martha was more active, practical, demonstrative; Mary contemplative, pensive and quiet, but moved in the deep. Martha as soon as she hears of the Lord’s approach, hastens to Him. Mary does the same afterwards (Joh_11:29), but speaks less and feels more. We have a precise analogy in the difference between Peter and John.—P. S.]

Joh_11:21. Lord, if Thou hadst been here [εἰἦςὦδε, not the language of reproach, but of regret].—Meyer translates: If Thou wert here,—not abiding in distant Peræa. That would mean: if this were Thy constant place of abode. This would convey an excellent sense if Bethany had ever bean the permanent dwelling-place of Christ; this, however, was not the case.—My brother would not have died.—Strongly expressed: ἐτεθνήκει. [On the different readings see Text. Note 5.—P. S.]

Joh_11:22. And even now [καὶ νῦν without ἀλλά] I know that etc.—She still retains this assurance. She gives strong expression to her confidence: 1. Whatever Thou mayest ask God, 2. God will give it to Thee—in the original, the“give” [δώσει σοι] takes precedence of the rest—; 3. the name of God twice mentioned. Certainly an indirect expression of the boldest hope, to which she dares not verbally give utterance—a hope, namely, of the raising of the dead man. The sisters at Bethany were acquainted with the raising of the daughter of Jairus and of the youth at Nain. Martha also remembered the promise (Joh_11:4) contained in the message of Jesus (Tholuck, Meyer). Hence not simply: if Thou wilt implore consolation (Rosenmüller), or: that Lazarus may not be cast away (Euthymius), or only an assurance: nevertheless, I consider Thee a favorite of God (Paulus). We must not, however, convert this indefinite and sifting expression into a confident expectation of the raising of the dead man,—as results also from the words: whatever Thou mayest ask.

[This is the only place where αἰτεῖσθαι is used of Jesus as praying to God, instead of ἐρωτᾶν, παρακαλεῖν, προσεύχεσθαι, δει̇σθαι, comp. Luk_22:32; Joh_14:16; Joh_16:26; Joh_17:9; Joh_17:15; Joh_17:20. Bengel calls αἰτεῖσθαι, verbum minus dignum; it is certainly more human and implies a state of dependence and need. It is, however, as Meyer remarks, in keeping with the deep excitement of Martha and her as yet imperfect knowledge of the superhuman relation of Christ to the Father.—P. S.]

Joh_11:23. Thy brother will rise again.—A grand promise, though corresponding with the indefinite hope in being indefinitely worded; not: I will now raise him up. She might understand Him as referring to the general future resurrection. And besides, specific faith in the raising of the dead must issue from a general faith in their resurrection. It was an ambiguous expression, designed for the trial and development of her faith.32

Joh_11:24. I know that he will rise again, etc.—Her meaning is obvious: I acquiesce in that, but I hope for something more. Her words are expressive not merely of a sad resignation, but of an indirect query—she is feeling her way (De Wette).

Joh_11:25-26. I am the resurrection.—[This is evidently the central idea of this chapter: Christ the Resurrection of the dead, and the Life of the living. The following miracle is the practical proof of what He is in His own person and a pledge of what He will do on the last day. To Himself (ἐγώ), therefore, He first directs the weak faith of Martha; from the future resurrection and the dead brother she was to look to the present (εἰμί), ever-living and life-giving Saviour. The general resurrection of the dead is only a manifestation of the moral power of the person that stood before her. What sublimity and what comfort in this testimony of Christ concerning Himself! Who can measure the effect which it produces from day to day in countless chambers of mourning and before open graves all over the Christian world!—Resurrection is put first, in opposition to the present power of death which is to be overcome; Resurrection is Life itself in conflict with, and victory over, death, it is the Death of death, the triumph over decay and dissolution swallowing up mortality in life. (Luther has forcibly described the marvellous duel between Life and Death on the cross, in an Easter hymn, where the passage occurs: “Wie ein Tod den andern frass; Ein Spott aus dem Tod ist worden.”) Life comprehends spiritual as well as physical life, life eternal of body and soul. Christ is the Victor of death and the grave, because He is the Prince of life in this absolute sense. In the words following the first clause is an explanation and application of the term Resurrection, the second of the term Life. I am the Resurrection: he that believeth in Me, though he have died, will live (will be raised up again). I am the Life: whoever liveth and believeth in Me will never die (will live forever in unbroken life-union with Me, the Prince of life).—P. S.]

I [and no other], i.e., the future resurrection is not an impersonal fate that is to take place at some future time, but a personal effect proceeding from Me who am present with you. It is even now present and active in Me.—And the life.—Life in the absolute sense, in its power to awaken spirit and body. Hence, as well the principle of resurrection (Hunnius, Luthardt), as its essence and result (Meyer). As the vital principle of the resurrection, He exerts a purely quickening influence, which branches into two forms: a. He who believes on Him, if he have died [ἀποθάνῃ, past], shall live, shall continue to live, shall rise again; b. he who is still living, who through belief on Him becomes truly alive, shall never die, i.e. shall not become a prey to death and the sense of mortality.33 The life of Christ is the author of the resurrection in a two-fold sense; it is the root of the waking of the physically dead, because it is the power which effects the moral awakening,—the power which rouses into spiritual life. They that live in Him shall not die; and the dead are not dead, but live again. In both cases, undoubtedly, the saying has reference to the same believer; the two propositions do not resolve themselves, as ancient commentators declare, into the parallel: “for dead believers I am the resurrection, for living ones the remedium mortis.” It is true, however, that the two propositions indicate, after Euthymius and others, the two-fold point of view; whether one be already dead (Lazarus) or still living (Martha, Mary). In both cases, the spirituo-physical or whole life-agency of Christ is meant. The dead rise spiritually and corporeally to the new life of the resurrection. The living are not swallowed up in the death of the world either spiritually or bodily (inasmuch as they transport with them the germ or the concrete body of the resurrection).

Therefore we are not to attach a merely spiritual meaning to the two propositions, just because Jesus is speaking of faith,—as, for instance: he that believeth on Me shall rise again spiritually, and he that hath received life shall retain it for ever; which would, implicite, involve the idea of the resurrection (Calvin). Neither is the first sentence to be referred to the resurrection of the body and the second to that of the spirit (Lampe, Olshausen, Stier). Comp. Joh_6:51; Joh_8:56.34

Believest thou this?—Christ had said: Every one that liveth and believeth, and had thus laid down a general rule. Now comes the application of it to her. If she believes this, she believes on Him.

Joh_11:27. I have believed that Thou art the Christ, the Son of God.—It is apparent that Martha does not thoroughly comprehend the grand thoughts in the words of the Lord; she, however, takes for granted that He is designating Himself as the Raiser of believers from the dead, and perceives that this is involved in a belief on the Messiah. She therefore utters a joyful confession of her faith in Him,—Ἐγὼ πεπίστευκα, with emphasis. She does not believe this now for the first time; she has already become a believer, being convinced a. that He is the Christ, b. as the Christ the Son of God; she believes in the full sense of the term, not simply in accordance with the theocratic idea of belief (Meyer), although she has not yet attained to a developed Johannean knowledge; c. that cometh [ὁ ἐρχόμενος] into the world (Present), that is: Who is even now continually engaged in the unfolding of His Messianic glory and work. Observe the truthfulness of Martha, which will not permit her to repeat Christ’s expressions word for word, but moulds her confession into conformity with the measure of her faith. And yet this is enough. Confessions differing in outward form or expression may agree internally and in substance.

Joh_11:28. And when she had so said, she went away.—Martha knows enough for the moment. With womanly instinct (such as especially belongs to her practical nature) she does not enter upon a deeper investigation of the great thoughts of Jesus; sufficient for her is the practical thought, that He meets her boldest hopes with the assurance that the resurrection is not merely a distant resurrection-time, but rather a present resurrection power resident in His person.

And called Mary, her sister, secretly.35—On account of the Jews who were present. It appears that Mary was still sitting in the interior of the house, surrounded by the Jews. Therefore Martha called her secretly,—λαθρά, a word, no doubt, indicative of a whisper: therefore she simply said: the Master is here—which Mary well understood; and therefore: He calleth thee. She was to go out to Him. The prudence of Jesus, who remained standing outside, is met by the prudence of Martha; common fear, however, is not to be attributed to either. He must remove His disciples from the influence of the Jews; and they, by going out to Him, must make confession of their faith in Him. It was, moreover, the rule of the Lord to avoid making a parade of His miracles, though He did, on this occasion, finally welcome the eventual notice of the Jews. Remarkable consonance of human prudence and divine assurance. We must not suppose that Martha simply gathered the mandate: He calleth thee, from the expectations that Jesus excited in her own breast (Chrysostom, Tholuck [Brückner, Stier]); she tells of a behest of Jesus (Lücke, Meyer).36

Joh_11:29. As soon as she heard that.—Mary, as the more important personality, now steps into the fore-ground, although Martha, as we see from Joh_11:39, again makes one of the group.

Joh_11:30. Now Jesus was not yet, etc.—See note to Joh_11:28. Jesus might have been assured from the circumstances of the case, that there were Jews in the house of mourning; it was needless for Martha to apprise Him (after Meyer) of the fact.

Joh_11:31. The Jews… followed her, thinking that she was going to the tomb to weep there.—It was a custom much practised among the Jews and Greeks, to sit down and mourn by the graves of their dead (Wetstein, on this passage; Geier, De luctu Hebr.). They therefore went with her, doubtless regarding the scene of mourning which they expected to witness, as a ceremony that had to be performed in compliance with Oriental custom. Even in these points the false way of the ancient world, which gratified its feelings by a common lamentation over the dead, stands contrasted with the truth of life, which demands, solitude for its grief. Of course the too great isolation of mourners is to be guarded against as much as the other extreme.

Joh_11:32. Mary… fell down at His feet.—The first stroke of character which distinguishes her from Martha. The second is, that she says nothing further than: Lord, if Thou hadst been here, my brother had not died. While Martha added to these words: and even now I know, etc. (Joh_11:22), Mary bursts into tears. Martha may at first strike us as the one who possesses the greater joy in believing, but Mary is the more human and warm in her feelings, and there is more of devotion in the expression of her faith. Her kneeling posture and her tears are more eloquent than the words of Martha. The saying that both utter, constitutes a precious trait from life. They made this remark to each other over and over again at the death -bed of Lazarus: if He were here, etc. Bengel: “Ex quo colligi potest, hunc earum fuisse sermonem ante fratris obitum: utinam adesset Dominus Jesus!”

Joh_11:33. He was vehemently (indignantly, angrily) affected (stirred up) in (his) spirit and troubled himself [ἐνεβριμήσατο τῷ πνεύματι καὶ ἐτάραξεν ἐαυτόν.—Comp. Joh_11:38 ἐμβριμώμενος ἐν ἑαυτῷ, but also the weeping between, ἐδάκρυσεν, Joh_11:35. Note first of all the perfect participation of the Lord in our natural feelings and His sympathy with our sorrows (Heb_2:17; Heb_4:15), in opposition to the stoic apathy, yet at the same time His perfect control over passion and grief and its violent outbreak.—P. S.]—He was deeply perturbed inspirit. The ἐνεβριμήσατο τῷ πνεύματι (see Mat_9:30; Mar_1:43; Mar_14:5) makes the passage one of exceeding difficulty. The affection here depicted is explained in three ways: 1. as anger, 2. as grief, 3. as a general affection of the mind, in which there is a combination of different emotions.37

1. Of anger. “βριμάομαι with all its compounds has in the classics as well as in the fathers of the Church (and the Byzantines) the signification: to snort (of horses), to mutter (of Hecate), to express anger, to threaten angrily.”38 But again, anger is variously understood:

a. He was angry, in respect of His divine nature, with His human spirit (πνεῦμα) in its passionate emotion (πάθος). So Origen, Chrysostom [Cyril, Theophylact, Euthymius Zigab.], recently Merz [Alford]. This conception is doubly untenable: in the first place, it condemns the human sentiment of grief; and secondly, it creates a conflict in the consciousness of the Lord. [It is also inconsistent with the act of weeping, which follows, Joh_11:35, and with the parallel expression ἐν ἑαυτῷ—in Himself, Joh_11:38, which proves that τῷ πνεύματι cannot be the object, but must be the sphere of the emotion=in His spirit.—P. S.]39 Hilgenfeld and others fall upon the same interpretation, with a different conception of it, in imputing a gnostic Christology to this Gospel.

b. He was angry at the power of sin and death (Augustine, Erasmus and others, Luthardt).40 Not to be excluded, but too abstract by itself.

c. At the unbelief of the Jews [Erasmus, Scholten, Wordsworth], and also the sisters (Theodor of Mopsueste, Lampe [Kuinoel],Wichelhaus]). But the sisters were not unbelieving.

d. That He was unable to avert the death of Lazarus (De Wette). This would be impious and is contrary to the connection.

e. At the misconception of His enemies and the want of comprehension displayed by His friends (Brückner). There was, at the moment, no special occasion for such a feeling.

f. At the mingling of the hypocritical tears [crocodile tears] of the Jews with the true tears of Mary (Meyer). Against this, comp. Joh_11:45 [“Many of the Jews… believed in Him”].41

g. This description of anger has, in the interest of negative criticism, been caricatured by Strauss and others.

2. Of grief. In the passages, Mat_9:30; Mar_1:43, anger is out of the question. Tholuck: “This verb is equally comprehensive with the corresponding German ‘grimmen,’ i.e. originally, an inward convulsive emotion of anger, grief, etc. Hence Luther renders: Er ergrimmete, which he himself explains by σπλαγχνίζεται.”42 Yet Tholuck observes that the signification of grief is not supported by usage, but only by analogy.43 In favor of this view are—Nonnus, Buzer, Grotius and others, Lücke.44 Tholuck, in the early editions of his Commentary, and Ewald: an emotion of great strength, analogous to the στενάζειν τῷ πνεύματι of Jesus, Mar_7:34 (comp. Mar_8:12).45

3. A general affection of the spirit, in which different sentiments combine and alternate. 46This construction is supported: (1) by the choice of the expression, since the Evangelists are familiar with other terms for the definite emotion either of anger or of grief; (2) by the addition: τῷ πνεύματι. The nature of the spirit renders it impossible for any single psychical emotion to rule within it, the spirit is the all-embracing unity of the many-parted life of the soul.47 (3) By the psychological experience, that when the soul is in a state of intense excitement, it is seized at once by the most diverse emotions (see the quotation from Göthe’s Iphigenie: “Es wälzet sich ein Rad von Freud’ und Schmerz durch meine Seele”—“A wheel of joy and grief revolveth through my soul.”—Leben Jesu, p. 1125). (4) By the situation. The weeping of Mary could excite nought but the most heart-felt sympathy. But the tears of the better sort among the Jews were mingled with the tears of the unbelieving. A scene of human lamentation over death presented itself—sympathy in view of the power of death was aroused. Jesus had not to bar out this sympathy; still it was necessary that He should stand on His guard against it—and rouse Himself in indignation against it. Thus His emotion was converted into an ecstatic anticipation of victory. I had at first chosen the expression: Er schütterte sich—He convulsed—agitated Himself. It is significant of violent agitation. But the one upon which I finally settled seems preferable: Er regte sich tief auf, He stirred Himself up from the deep. He moved Himself in the spirit to such a degree that the disciples perceived His agitation in His bodily appearance,—hence: He convulsed Himself; He billowed up,—He surged up. A divine storm of the spirit [ein Gottesge witter des Geistes] passed through His breast, under which His human nature quaked. The fremere invariably arises out of the depths.

[It is not inconsistent with this interpretation of Dr. Lange, if we emphasize sin and death as the chief object of Christ’s mingled emotion and commotion. In this heart-rending scene of mourning: the grave of the departed friend, the broken hearts of the beloved sisters, and the tears of their sympathizers, Jesus saw a miniature photograph of the world of human suffering caused by the terrible curse of sin; all the graves and all the mourners passed in endless procession before His vision; He felt the combined misery and woe of the human family (“der Menschheit ganzer Jammer fasste Ihn an”); He was moved at once with holy indignation at sin which caused all this dreadful desolation, and with tender sympathy for the sufferers, which latter feeling found vent in tears.—And troubled (shook) himself, ἐτάραξεν ἑαυτόν. This is not quite the same with the passive form ἐταράχθη τῷ πνεύματι, which is used on a similar occasion, Joh_13:21, but it expresses the external manifestation of the inward commotion by a voluntary act. Hengstenberg (II. 261): “Jesus excites Himself for the energetic conflict with Death, the evil enemy of mankind.” Comp. Meyer, Luthardt, Godet, in loc. Augustine, Bengel and Wordsworth derive from the expression the inference that Christ’s affections were not passions, but voluntary emotions (voluntariæ commotiones), which He had entirely in His power, and that the emotion here spoken of was therefore orderly, rational, full of dignity and directed to proper ends.—P. S.]

Joh_11:34. Where have ye laid him?—Manifestly, the impulse to work the miracle is completed by what has been going on in His inner life.—Come and see.—The answerers—Martha and Mary.

Joh_11:35. Jesus wept [Ἐδάκρυσεν ὁ Ἰησ.].—Two little words: a whole verse, of infinite value. Significant and pertinent verse-division. On the way to the grave, Jesus weeps. After He has troubled Himself in spirit and has made good His stand against all sympathy with Jewish lamentations for the dead, He is at liberty to give Himself up to His fellow-feeling with the sisters; the tear follows His passion, as a summer rain succeeds the thunder-storm. The objection, that Jesus could not weep if He had a real presentiment of the miracle that He was about to perform, carries with it a doubt as to the compatibility of the divine and the human nature; it is also contradicted by human experience itself.48 Not only the succession of feelings, but likewise the truth and disinterestedness of feeling, are explained by a fact, in accordance with which the deepest grief may invade the mind when it is occupied with the anticipation of joy, and vice versâ; nay, more;—these opposite emotions may even succeed each other with the rapidity of lightning, like a “wheel of fire” in swift revolution. “Chrysologus supposed that Jesus wept for joy; Isodorus Pelus., because the raising of Lazarus would summon him from repose back to the unrest of life (this was the decision even of the Concilium Toletanum) etc. All these explanations of the fathers of the Church are utterly unnatural.” Heubner.

[This sentence is the shortest, and yet one of the most significant verses in the Bible. It stands by itself unconnected by any particle with what precedes or what follows. It describes what was seen, and intimates what was felt. Jesus knew that He would shortly raise Lazarus, but in true sympathy He opened His heart to the present grief which opened to Him a picture of the universal desolations of the king of terrors; and with a sympathizing heart, not with a heart of stone, He raised the friend to life again. He felt and acted like a man before He gave a proof of His divine power; so He slept just before He stilled the storm (Mat_8:24). But His grief was moderate. Δακρύειν signifies a gentle weeping, the expression of a calm and tender grief; it differs from κλαίειν, the crying and wailing of the sisters and their friends, Joh_11:33, which implies “not only the shedding of tears, but also every external expression of grief” (Robinson, sub. κλαίω). It is remarkable that the very Gospel which most clearly reveals the divinity of Christ, notices this truly human trait of His character. As far as we are informed, Jesus wept or shed tears on three occasions: tears of tender friendship and silent grief at the grave of Lazarus (ἐδάκρυσεν); tears of bitter sorrow and loud lamentation over unbelieving Jerusalem in view of the approaching judgment, Luk_19:41 (ἔκλαυσεν); and bloody tears of agony and sacerdotal intercession in Gethsemane when He bore the burden of the sins of all mankind and wrestled with the powers of darkness, Luk_22:44 (comp. Heb_5:7, μετὰ κραυγῆς ἰσχυρᾶς καὶ δακρύων). The eternal Son of God in tears! What a sublime contrast; what a proof of His true humanity, condescending love and tender sympathy. How near He is brought in His tears to every mourner. How far more natural, lovely and attractive is a weeping Saviour than a cold, heartless, unfeeling stoic!49 By His conduct at the grave He has sanctified tears of sympathy, provided only we sorrow not immoderately as those who have no hope (1Th_4:13). His tears over Jerusalem and in Gethsemane should call forth our tears of repentance and gratitude.—P. S.]

Joh_11:36-37. Behold how he loved him.—This even the Jews could see, without comprehending the full significance of His tears. It is certainly the intention of the evangelist to distinguish these kindly disposed Jews from the others who thus express themselves: Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man, etc. (Joh_11:37). According to Chrysostom and most of the ancients, as also Luthardt and Meyer, this speech has something of malice in it;50 according to Lücke, Tholuck and others, it is well meant. The idea of malice is supported by 1. the manifest intention to spread abroad an accusation against Jesus, to the effect that He was either unable (want of power) or unwilling (want of love) to avert this death; 2. the circumstance that their words occasion again the convulsive self-agitation of the Lord, and, so to speak, constrain Him to brace Himself anew in the spirit. 3. Here, as in Joh_11:46, John distinguishes the malicious Jews from those of the better sort by τινὲς δέ. [“John seldom uses δέ as a mere copula, but generally as but, see Joh_11:46; Joh_11:49; Joh_11:51.” Alford]. Hence arises the conjecture that they, starting from the assumption of the powerlessness of Jesus in this case, are desirous to cast a shadow of doubt even upon the healing of the blind man (Meyer). Still less is it to be expected that these citizens of Jerusalem should cite the previous raisings of the dead in Galilee (Strauss) rather than the healing of the blind man, which last was an event of recent occurrence in Jerusalem, still fresh in the memory of all,—an occasion of admiration to some, and to others of Pharisaical offence.51 Their words are the cause of fresh agitation on the part of the Lord, now, however, He is stirred not only in spirit but in Himself, i.e. the emotion is felt in the soul-life also.

Joh_11:38. To the tomb. It was a cave.—[An indication of the comparative Wealth of Lazarus and his sisters that they had a family vault, such as is here implied. The poor were buried in common places. The large concourse of mourners from Jerusalem, and the very costly ointment with which Mary anointed the feet of our Lord (12:3), lead to the same conclusion.—P. S.] On the Israelitish graves see Com. on Matt. chap. 27.52 On the grave of Lazarus, which is said still to exist, see the books of travel (Robinson, II. p. 310).53—And a stone lay upon [or against] it.—Ἐπέκειτο may mean: upon or before, according as the grave is to be conceived of as a perpendicular vault (such were entered by means of steps), or as a horizontal one. That the tradition makes it a perpendicular sepulchre is not conclusive proof that it was so; yet the expression ἄρατε τὸν λίθον, seems also to testify in favor of a perpendicular grave. In Mat_28:2 the term is ἀπεκύλιτε.54

Joh_11:39. Lord, by this time he stinketh [ἤδηὄζει].—The fearful reality of the grave, in which her brother has lain four days, disturbs the practical woman and shakes her faith. She thinks a scandal may result from the bursting forth of the odor of corruption,—especially in the presence of so many people from Jerusalem. For it follows from the reason she assigns for her remark, that she does not already perceive this odor: for he hath been dead four days. [Lit. he is now the fourth day (viz. as a dead man), τεταρταῖος quatriduanus, an adjective marking Succession of days, but used only proverbially, like δευτεραῖος, τριταῖος. δωδεκαταῖος.—P. S.]55 “It is a proverb in the Talmud and the Targum, that corruption sets in the third day after death” (Tholuck after Wetstein). As “the sister of the dead man” [ἡ ἀδελφὴ τοῦ τετελευκότος] she shudders at the thought of seeing her brother in a putrefying state, of witnessing the exposure of that countenance upon which corruption had already set its seal. We cannot, from the words of Martha, draw the inference that a previous embalming of the body by wrapping spices about it, had not taken place; the customary anointing might, however, have been deferred by the sisters, because, almost unconsciously to themselves, a spark of hope was smouldering within them, as they anxiously expected the coming of Jesus. Hence, likewise, Mary had saved the precious ointment of spikenard. There is no more foundation for the statement that at this particular moment Martha, influenced by the utterances of Jesus, Joh_11:23-26, had merged her hope of a special raising of Lazarus in a higher stretch of faith (Meyer), than there is ground for questioning the momentary tottering of her hope (Tholuck). This only can be said: she is so agitated by the fear lest her brother appear as a putrefying corpse, that she is unmindful for the instant of the duty of submission to the word of Christ, and delays the execution of His command.

Joh_11:40. Did I not tell thee?—Not only the words, Joh_11:25, but the whole of His sayings from Joh_11:4.—The glory of God appears at such time as He reveals Himself in His wonderworking might. Manifestly, therefore, they had faith in the words of Jesus as they took the stone away (41).

Joh_11:41. Jesus lifted up His eyes to heaven.—We have already adverted to the grand aim of this form of the miraculous healing of Jesus. The Jews in Jerusalem are to see in a great sign, not only the miraculous power of Jesus but also His connection with their God in the working of this miracle. Hence the unreserved outpouring of the prayer. But the prayer is a thanksgiving: I thank thee. He is confident of being heard, and this presupposes earlier prayers.56 So that when He says: I knew that thou hearest me always, an intimation is given us of an uninterrupted life of prayer, a continual union, in prayer, of the will of Jesus with the will of the Father—a union resulting in the continual working with Him of God’s omnipotence. Thus Christ accomplishes His miracles as the God-Man; not in pure divinity, or as a super-human God, without the Father (see Joh_5:19; Joh_5:26; Joh_6:6), nor in simple humanity amidst sporadic entreaties.57

At the same time this saying introduces the following utterance: but because of the multitude standing around, etc.—Those who, like Baur, have inferred from these words that the prayer of Jesus is debased to a mock-prayer have failed to comprehend the grand idea of it.58 In presence of the Jews of Jerusalem, Jesus calls upon their God as His Father, and is heard.59 Thus Moses, in pursuance of God’s instructions, produces his credentials as the ambassador of the God of Israel, before his nation and before Pharaoh (Exo_4:3 ff; Joh_7:9); and thus Elijah on Mount Carmel, before the priests of Baal and the backsliding people, petitions the God of Israel for the decisive sign from heaven which shall corroborate the truth of the Israelitish faith, 1Ki_18:36 ff. For this cause, the design of this prayer is so distinctly emphasized: that they might believe that Thou didst send Me.—That prayer may not have a reflexive reference to the hearers of it, is a tenet which finds prayer only in pantheistic moods; it would, if consistently acted upon, abolish the idea of motherly, ecclesiastical, judicial prayer (the oath), of prayer offered in performing miracles and of prayer generally.

Joh_11:43. Lazarus, come forth!—Properly: Lazarus, hither! forth! [δεῦρο ἔξω, without a verb, huc foras! Ici, dehors! The simple grandeur, brevity and force of this resurrection call corresponds with the mighty effect, and may be compared to the sublime passage in Genesis: Let there be light! And there was light. Cyril calls it θεοπρεπὲς καὶ βασιλικὸν κέλευσμα.—P. S.] According to Origen [and Chrysostom] the moment of awakening preceded the thanksgiving of Jesus and the call merely occasioned the forthcoming of the recipient of new life. But, manifestly, the loud call with a powerful voice and majestic utterance should itself be recognized as the moment of awakening.60

Joh_11:44. Bound hand and foot with grave-clothes.—Since the dead man was so wrapped up, even his face being covered, there happened, according to Basilius (θαύμαζε θαῦμα ἐν θαύματι), Chrysostom and many others, Lampe, Stier, a miracle within a miracle,—namely, that Lazarus was able to go forth in spite of his wrappings.61 Others, again, have assumed that he was wrapped about after the fashion of the Egyptians, his hands and feet being bandaged separately (Olshausen, De Wette). Lücke supposes him to have been wrapped from head to foot so closely that his freedom of motion was not impeded.62 From our passage the windings certainly seem to have been partial; whether they were applied in the Egyptian style or not. Such might also have been the idea of the sisters, particularly as the ceremonies of anointing and interment had not yet been completed. But it is obvious that the miracle of new life might be carried out in a miraculous walking, similar to somnambulism. And indeed it was necessary that the forthcomer should be disencumbered of his wrappings, in order that he might move with perfect freedom,—in accordance with the words of Jesus: Loose him and let him go.—i.e. go home independent of aid. We cannot adopt the inference of Grotius; he holds that Christ did not accompany him: ne quasi in triumphum ducere videretur.

[The terms ἄφετε ὑπάγειν, as Godet observes, have a triumphant tone, like the order to the cripple: “Take up thy bed and walk” (Joh_5:8). Trench: “St. John here breaks off the narrative of the miracle itself, leaving us to imagine their joy, who thus beyond all expectation received back their dead from the grave; a joy, which was well nigh theirs alone, among all the mourners of all times,

‘Who to the verge have followed those they love

And on the insuperable threshold stand,

With cherished names its speechless calm reprove,

And stretch in the abyss their ungrasped hand.’

He leaves this, and passes on to show us the historic significance of this miracle in the development of the Lord’s earthly history, the permitted link which it formed in the chain of those events, which were to end, according to the determinate decree and counsel of God, in the atoning death of the Son of God upon the cross.”—P. S.]

DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL

1. Christ the Resurrection and the Life, the principle of the future resurrection:

a. The foretokens of the principle: the miracles of transformation and the histories of raisings from the dead in the Old Testament, and the raisings of the dead effected by Jesus.

b. The appearance of the principle in the revivifying life and spiritual resurrection of Christ.

c. The operations of the principle until the first resurrection and until the general resurrection.

2. Faith in Christ, the Son of God, embraces the resurrection.

3. The mysterious, holy affections in the life of the Lord. The sensational life in the spirit or the innermost and highest emotion, within which all feelings revolve;—supreme compassion for the misery of men, supreme indignation at the unbelief of the world. The Lord’s bracing of Himself against all sympathy with ungodly sorrow, while at the same time fully sympathizing with the godly sorrow of men.

4. The raising of Lazarus.

Different interpretations: (1) Lazarus was apparently dead (Paulus, Ammon, Schweizer and others); (2) the account a myth (Strauss); either a misunderstanding of a conversation concerning the resurrection, held with the two women of Bethany on the occasion of the death of Lazarus (Weisse); or a remodelling of the story of the raising of the young man at Nain (Gfrörer); or a dogmatico-allegorical representation of the δόξα of Christ (Baur).63—At the grave of Lazarus modern skeptical criticism manifestly celebrates its own dissolution—every man tells a different story.

Omission of the history in the Synoptists: (1) The synoptists were not acquainted with it (Lücke and others). (2) It lay beyond the circle of their statements (Meyer). (3) It was omitted out of consideration for the family of Bethany (Herder, Schulthess, Olshausen, Lange, Leben Jesu, II. 2, p. 1133). Meyer assures us that this last explanation runs counter to the mind and spirit of that first age of Christianity (he should say rather: to the spiritual bravado of the Montanists and Circumcellians). Comp. Joh_12:10.

Instrumentalities of the miracle. a. The general one: Christ the resurrection and the life, the principle of raisings, quickenings, of the dead. b. The special one: Christ, now entertaining a presentiment of His own death and resurrection. It was necessary that Jerusalem and the Supreme Council should behold a sign of His glory beaming very near to them; this robbed them of all excuse c. The most special one: The faith of the sisters and of Lazarus, and the expectation of all,—especially of the dying man,—that Jesus would come and manifest His power and willingness to help; an expectation which Lazarus preserved in death, as Jesus Himself carried down to death His confidence in His own resurrection (see my Leben Jesu, II. 2, p. 327 and 1127 ff.).

The form of the miracle: A prayer for the hearing of the God of Israel, as a testimony to the Lord in the face of Jerusalem.

Its import: The crown of His raisings from the dead, the presage of His resurrection, the first flashing of His δόξα from the Mount of Olives over Jerusalem.

5. “As regards the moral application, there is no need for allegorical interpretation such as is found in Jerome, Augustine, Bourdaloue, H. Martin, etc. This allegorical interpretation is obviously without historical foundation; it is unnatural,—and to make Lazarus, the friend of Jesus, the type of a sinner utterly dead and even stinking,—is also unseemly.” Heubner.

HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL

The raising of Lazarus as the most glorious of the revivifying miracles of Jesus: 1. In respect of the peculiar circumstances attending it in comparison with the previous raisings of the dead; 2. in respect of its intrinsic significance, as demonstrating that Christ is the Resurrection and the Life, or as a demonstration of His glory; 3. in respect of its decisive effects.—Or: the raising of Lazarus in respect of its essential features: 1. The introductory conversation; 2. the walk to the grave; 3. the prayer of thanksgiving; 4. the awakening call; 5. the appearance of the dead man; 6. the effect of his resurrection.—The arrival of Jesus on the fourth day after the burial of Lazarus. Or: Jesus, coming as a Saviour, never comes too late.—How the banished and fugitive Jesus from Peræa and those haughty scorners of Him, the Jews from Jerusalem, meet again at the grave of Lazarus.—The different kinds of condolence on the death of a member of a family: 1. The condolence of the world in general; 2. the ceremonious condolence of Pharisees; 3. the hearty condolence of relatives and friends; 4. the heavenly condolence of Christ.—Christ waiting before the village, or the divine power of Christ in His human weakness,—the type of the Christian life.—The greatest precaution combined with the most joyful anticipation of victory.—Martha and Mary at the grave of Lazarus. Comparison of the two, 1. At their first meeting with Jesus (Luk_10:38), 2. at the second here, 3. at the third in the history of the anointing.—The saying of both: Lord, if Thou hadst been here, etc.—The if of mourners in view of the dead. If this and that had happened: 1. In what degree sinful? As an expression of grief that will not be reconciled to the dispensation of God. 2. In what degree warranted? As an expression of pain investigating the causes of the suffering. 3. In what degree salutary? As an expression of humiliation before God on account of actual neglect.—The trial of faith imposed upon Martha.—The deliverance of Martha from petty household cares by means of the deep distress and mighty aid.—Christ the Resurrection and the Life: 1. What this means: a. the Life unto resurrection; b. the Resurrection unto life: 2. What this signifies to believers: a. to the dead; b. to the living.—Believest thou this?—The confession of Martha in reply to the question of Christ touching her faith.—How Martha here already subordinates herself to Mary, whom she before desired to tutor (she takes a still more subordinate position in the history of the anointing,—serving silently).—“The Master is here:” 1. The Master is here 2. and calleth thee.—The presageful visit to the grave, prelusive to the most presageful visit to the grave of Jesus.—The weeping of Mary and the weeping of the Jews: 1. In itself; the external similarity, the internal diversity; 2. in its signification: thus voices mingle in the songs of the sanctuary, tears in our houses, different spirits in the company of Jesus.—The twice-repeated convulsion of Jesus inspirit: 1. The occasion, 2. the mood, 3. the fruit.—The sensational life of Jesus.—The heart of Jesus in its full revelation: 1. In the full revelation of its love, 2. of its holiness, 3. of its divine power.—How the Lord Himself must guard His temper before His great work.—The moving and yet so salutary sight of the grave.—Our graves.—In their relation to the grave of Christ.—The temptation of Martha.—The prayer of thanksgiving and its signification: 1. In relation to the Lord: reliance on God; 2. with reference to the Jews: a miracle in fellowship with their God, as a testimony against them and to them; 3. in relation to the mourners: the divine consecration of their human joy.—The call of Christ three ghostly words, instinct with vital power: 1. The name, 2. to Christ, 3. forth.—The voice of Christ.—The infinitely significative and comprehensive nature of the human voice.—The unique heaven-tone (the peal of love and lightning-flash of life) in the voice of Christ.—The decidedness of Christ in all His vital traits,—even in His voice.—The appearance of the living man in the garments of the grave, a type of the new life of the Christian in the old vestments of death.—What is expressed by the words: “Loose him and let him go”: 1. How the adoring amazement of the chronicler is lost in silence; 2. how Christ gives Lazarus credit for full vital strength; 3. how He diverts attention from Himself to him who has been raised up.—The three evangelical stories of Bethany.

Starke: Canstein: Jesus comes soon enough because He always brings salvation with Him, though to us He often seems to come too late.—Hedinger: Everything is possible to the power of God: it quickens physically and spiritually those who have lain in the grave for an hour or for a thousand years,—who have sinned for a long or for a short time.—To comfort the mourning is a part of godliness.—Quesnel: We comfort one who has lost his brother by death, and have little or no compassion for him who has lost his God.—Osiander: See how faith wrestles and battles with unbelief!—God is rich above all who call on Him and can do infinitely more than we ask.—Bibl. Wirt.: The greatest consolation of Christians in all kinds of misery and so in peril of death, is the resurrection of the dead, 1Co_15:54; Heb_2:14.—He who believes not on Christ is dead ere he dies.

Joh_11:28. Ah, how fitting it is for one friend to call the other to Christ!—It is often better to preach Christ in secret than to proclaim Him publicly.

Joh_11:29. Hedinger: Love tarrieth not.

Joh_11:31. Zeisius: Those whose hearts are very heavy—and particularly those that are sorely tempted—should not be left alone.

Joh_11:32. Canstein: A believing knowledge of Jesus worketh holy reverence toward Him and deep humility.—The misery of men moves Jesus’ pity. We too, after His example, should pity the wretched.—Zeisius: We may weep and lament for them that are asleep in Jesus,—but with moderation; and we may comfort ourselves, on the other hand, with the future, joyful resurrection, 1Th_4:13; 1Th_4:18.

Joh_11:35. Thus He wept over Jerusalem (Luk_19:41) and in the garden of Gethsemane, Heb_5:7. He first gives a sign of His true humanity and then of His divinity.

Joh_11:41. Ibid.: Learn here from Jesus, when thou art about anything of importance, not to enter upon it without prayer.

Joh_11:43. Osiander: A testimony to the divine majesty of Christ.

Joh_11:45. Quesnel: It is good for us to visit pious people; sometimes our salvation depends thereon.—Gerlach: Jesus begins here, as He often does, with words purposely mysterious and sifting; they sound like a general consolation uttered in view of the future resurrection.—It was the grand aim of Jesus in many of His discourses to exhibit the unity of the spiritual and bodily resurrection; He therefore raised up the bodies of the dead.—The resurrection of the wicked is not a true resurrection, but the second death.—He calls the dead as He would a living man, as God calls that which is not as though it were, Rom_4:17.

Lisco, Joh_11:33 : The affections of believers have not the mastery over them; they are not passions.—Braune: Mourning has a good name in the Old Testament; Abraham, Isaac and Jacob mourned. And Paul writes (Rom_12:15): “Rejoice with them that do rejoice, and weep with them that weep.” Comp. Php_2:27.—From the God of all comfort cometh the gift of consolation.

Joh_11:27. In this belief is contained her all. Lest her defective conception should deprive her of the enjoyment of salvation.—Mary, Joh_11:32. Not another word,—only tears; they speak louder.—He was convulsed, etc. What a glorious glimpse of the great heart of Jesus John gives us here!—Scripture mentions eight persons who were raised from the dead: the son of the widow of Sarepta, by means of Elijah (1Ki_17:22), the son of the Shunamitess by Elisha (2Ki_4:35), a dead man who was cast into the grave of Elisha (2Ki_13:21), the young man of Nain (Luk_7:15), the daughter of Jairus (Mat_9:25), Lazarus, Tabitha by Peter (Act_9:40), Eutychus by Paul (Act_20:9).—Gossner, Joh_11:17. Yet He never fails to come.—No Christian dies.—It is true a child of God may outwardly suffer all manner of things,—but that is to be sick; that is not death.—Mary. She arose, not to go to the dead, but to Him who was her life.—Mary spoke in the same tone that her sister used. For it is customary for one thing to infect another. One man may discourage and dishearten another.—Another time He said on a similar occasion: Weep not! Namely, for the consolation of the widow of Nain. But here He weeps Himself. By His tears 1. He heals (hallows) ours, 2. He wipes them away.—The mighty voice of the Saviour a type of His almighty grace.

Heubner: The longer faith is obliged to wait, the stronger faith grows by waiting and trial,—the more glorious is the help afforded (Wichelhaus).

Joh_11:24. A general belief in a certain truth is indeed of no avail. This does not touch a man. It must become a faith personally applied to and personally concerning us.—“Believest thou this?” A proof-question for every one.—“The inner relationship of the heart to Jesus must remain a secret to the world, although we should freely confess Jesus” (Wichelhaus).—The Master calleth thee. It is a question of personal relationship.

Joh_11:29. Who may delay when Jesus calls him?—What divine strength human tears possess!

Joh_11:43. The voice that we now hear is the authoritative word of the Awakener of the Dead, who hath the keys of hell and of death.—Like a spirit Lazarus comes forth, that at the sight of him all may be seized with trembling and awe, as they think of the invisible world thus brought near to them.—The dead man vouchsafes no narrative to our ears. “He had nought to say in words of this earth” (Herder).—Schleiermacher: The Jews. Such sympathy in the common incidents of life as is manifested even by men who do not share our feelings in regard to the things which are most important and which we have most at heart, should not be condemned by us as devoid of sincerity.—The grief that locks itself up within itself is selfish, inasmuch as it separates a man from connection with his brethren.—That which can rise so high (to God), that which is capable of such communion with the universal fountain of life, is also removed beyond the power of death. If thou believe, thou shalt see the glory of God.

Mallet: Jesus’ wrath and tears.—Tears are not only the signs of love, interest, grief; they are also infallible signs of human impotence and weakness. Thus tears here reveal His holy love, but they conceal His might and glory.—She called the grave the place of corruption,—the Lord calls it the place of glory.—The Jews. There is a power in the rays of the sun. They wake the vital germ within the grain of corn and call a new, beautiful and manifold life into being. But the same sun-beam draws poisonous vapors out of bogs and morasses. It summons life from the one,—death from the other.

[Craven: From Origen: Joh_11:41. Then they took away the stone; Some delay had arisen; it is best to let nothing come between the commands of Jesus and doing them.—Jesus lifted up His eyes: We should pray after Christ’s pattern—lift up the eyes of our heart above present things in memory, in thought, in intention.——From Hilary: Joh_11:41-42. Christ’s prayer did not benefit Himself, but our faith; He did not want help, but we want instruction.——From Augustine: Joh_11:22. Martha does not say, Bring my brother to life again, but I know whatsoever Thou wilt ask, God will give it Thee—i.e., what Thou wilt do is for Thy judgment and not for my presumption to determine.

Joh_11:25. He that believeth in Me: Faith is the life of the soul.

Joh_11:34. Where have ye laid him? He knew, but He asked to try the faith of His people.

Joh_11:35. Jesus wept: Wherefore did He weep, but to teach men to weep?

Joh_11:39. Take ye away the stone: Mystically, Take away the burden of the law, proclaim grace. [?]——From Chrysostom: Joh_11:20; Joh_11:28. Martha does not take her sister with her because she would speak with Christ alone; when her hopes had been raised by Him she called Mary.

Joh_11:29. In her devotions to (trust in?) her Master, she had no time to think of her afflictions.

Joh_11:35-38. That He wept and groaned are mentioned to show the reality of His human nature.——From Bede: Joh_11:32-33. Mary did not say so much as Martha, she could not speak for weeping, (but her tears were as effective as the words of her sister.—E. R. C.)——From Alcuin: Joh_11:17. Our Lord delayed for four days that the resurrection of Lazarus might be the more glorious.

Joh_11:25. I am the Resurrection, because I am the Life.

Joh_11:26. Jesus knew that she believed, but sought a confession unto salvation.

Joh_11:35. Jesus wept because He was the fountain of pity.

Joh_11:43-44. Christ awakes, because His power it is which quickens inwardly; the disciples loose, because by the ministry they who are quickened are absolved, [?] (through the ministry they are delivered from the bondage of sin.—E. R. C.)——From Theophylact: Joh_11:28. The Master is come and calleth for thee: the presence of Christ in itself a call.

Joh_11:33-35. He groaned—wept: Jesus sometimes gave His human nature free vent, sometimes He restrained it: He acted thus—1. to prove that He is very man; 2. to teach us the due measure of joy and grief—the absence of sympathy and sorrow is brutal, the excess is womanly [better: heathenish.—P. S.]

Joh_11:43. He cried with a loud voice—the symbol of that trumpet which will sound at the general resurrection.—From Burkitt: Joh_11:21-38. Faith and infirmity mixed together: faith, in Martha’s firm persuasion of Christ’s power; infirmity, in her limiting Him as to place and time.

Joh_11:23. Christ’s meek answer to Martha’s passionate discourse.

Joh_11:30. The earnestness of Christ to finish His work—He went to the grave before entering the house.

Joh_11:35. Jesus wept partly from compassion, partly for example—1. from compassion, (1) to humanity debased by sin to death, (2) to Lazarus whom He was about to bring back to a sinful and suffering world, ((3) to the sorrowing sisters.—E. R. C.); 2. for example, to bring tears from us—(1) at the sight of others’ woes, (2) at the graves of our friends.

Joh_11:39. Take ye away the stone: Our hands must do their utmost before Christ will help.

Joh_11:43. Our Lord did not say Lazarus, revive, as to one dead; but Come forth, teaching us that they are alive to Him who are dead to us.——From M. Henry: Joh_11:17. When Jesus came: Promised salvations though they often come slowly, always come surely.

Joh_11:19. The home of Martha and Mary a house of mourning.—Grace will keep sorrow from the heart (Joh_14:1) not from the house.—Where there are mourners, there ought to be comforters.—They comforted them concerning their brother, speaking (probably), 1. of the good name he had left behind; 2. of the happy state to which he had gone.

Joh_11:20. The different temperaments of Martha and Mary, as manifested by their different conduct.

Joh_11:21. If Thou hadst been here: We are apt to add to our troubles by fancying what might have been.

Joh_11:22. When we know not what in particular to ask, let us in general refer ourselves to God. When we know not what to pray for, the Great Intercessor knows and is never refused.

Joh_11:23. The comforting answer of Jesus. Thy brother shall rise again, directing Martha’s thoughts forward to what shall be.

Joh_11:25-26. Note 1. The sovereign power of Christ, I am the Resurrection and the Life; 2. the promise of the new Covenant, (1) what it is, life (a) for the body, a blessed resurrection, (b) for the soul, a blessed immortality, (2) to whom made, believers in Him.

Joh_11:27. Martha’s Creed; observe 1. The guide of her faith, the word of Christ; 2. The ground of her faith, the authority of Christ; 3. The matter of her faith, that Christ was (1) The Christ—the anointed One, (2) The Son of God, (3) The One who should come, ὁ ἐρχόμενος.

Joh_11:29-31. The (gracious) haste of Mary; she did not consult 1. the decorum of her mourning, 2. her neighbours.

Joh_11:29-32. Mary’s abounding love for Christ; though He had seemed unkind in His delay she takes it not amiss.

Joh_11:31-33. The Jews who followed Mary led to Christ by the beholding of the miracle; it is good to cleave to Christ’s friends in their sorrows, for thereby we may come to know Him better.

Joh_11:33. The tears of Mary; the tears of devout affection have a loud, prevailing voice with Christ.—He was troubled, i.e., He troubled Himself; He was voluntary both in His passion and His compassion.

Joh_11:35. Jesus wept, showing that He was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.

Joh_11:39-40. Martha’s (momentary) distrust, and Christ’s gentle reproof and re-assurance.

Joh_11:41, The prayer of Christ teaches us in praying—1. to call God, Father; 2. in our prayers to praise Him.

Joh_11:42. The objects of His public thanksgiving—1. to obviate the (possible) objections of His enemies that He wrought miracles by charms or the power of Satan; 2. to corroborate the faith of His friends.

Joh_11:43. Loud voice—1. significant of the power put forth; 2. typical of other works of resurrection—(1) of the gospel call, (2) of the Archangel’s trumpet at the last day.

Joh_11:44. The miracle was wrought—1. speedily, 2. perfectly, 3. with the additional miracle, that Lazarus came forth though bound hand and foot.—From Scott: Joh_11:41. We cannot raise the spiritually dead, but we should remove the stones and the grave clothes.—From Stier: Joh_11:21. Lord, if Thou hadst been here; thus does man look back with if in all his heavy trials.

Joh_11:22. Martha at this point a heroine in faith, but only for a moment.

Joh_11:24. The implied dissatisfaction of the bereaved one with the mere promise of a resurrection at the last day—(“Half-faith always does what Martha here does.” Draeseke).

Joh_11:25. I am the Resurrection—1. because I am the Life; 2. as I am the Life—in the same most intrinsically true, and already prevailing, sense.

Joh_11:25-26. He that believeth in Me shall receive a life which death cannot invade. When the living bury His living nothing should be heard but resurrection joy.

Joh_11:33. He groaned in the spirit (ἐνεβριμήσατο τῷ πνεύματι); The sorrow of Jesus on account of sin, and His wrath against death.

Joh_11:44. Loose him: The relies of the (spiritual) grave are (in the case of the spiritually quickened) to be removed, by the Lord’s appointment, through the ministry of men—From Barnes: Joh_11:26. Believest thou this? The time of affliction a favorable period to try ourselves whether we have faith.

Joh_11:28. The Master: A title which Jesus claimed for Himself, Mat_23:8; Mat_23:10.

Joh_11:35. Jesus wept: Learn—1. that the most tender friendship is not inconsistent with the most pure religion; 2. that it is right to sympathize with the afflicted; 3. that sorrow at the death of friends is right; 4. the tenderness of the character of Jesus.

Joh_11:40 The glory of God: The power and goodness displayed in the resurrection.—From Melville: Joh_11:25. I am the Resurrection and the Life; Christ the cause and the origin of the unbelieving Jews: Christianity doth not bid us abate anything of our souls.—From Hall: Joh_11:28. Secretly for fear of the unbelieving Jews: Christianity doth not bid us abate anything of our wariness.—From A Plain Commentary (Oxf.): Joh_11:20. The blessedness of Martha in going forth to meet her Lord.

Joh_11:30. By His remaining without the town, the whole body of friends brought to Him (and to the beholding of the miracle.—E. R. C.)—From Hutcheson: Joh_11:24. Men believe great things that are far off, when their faith proves weak in a less matter of present trial—From Williams: Joh_11:33-41. God created man by a word, without effort; but recalls him to life not without many groans and tears and intercessions.—From Ryle: Joh_11:20-27. To know how much grace believers have, we must see them in trouble.

Joh_11:21. A strange mixture of emotions—1. reproachful passion; 2. love; 3. faith; 4. unbelief.

Joh_11:24. General faith is easier than particular.

Joh_11:31. Those who came to comfort, themselves blessed.

Joh_11:33-35. He saw weeping and He wept (as the consequence of His real humanity); He still retains His human nature

Joh_11:36. Behold how He loved him! Of all graces, love most arrests the attention and influences the opinion of the world.—Var. 40. Said I unto thee: The best believers need reminding of Christ’s sayings.—From Owen: Joh_11:25-26. He that believeth in Me, etc.: Our Lord’s commentary on the preceding words, I am the Resurrection and the Life.

Joh_11:41-42. The duty of public thanksgiving for gracious answers to prayer64—1. that God may be glorified by the, one benefited before others; 2. that others may be led to glorify Him.]

Footnotes:

[17]Joh_11:17.—[Tischendorf omits ἤδη (already), on the authrity of A.* D., etc.; but Alford, Westcott and Hort retain it with B. C.—P. S.]

[18]Joh_11:19.—Lachmann, Tischendorf, [Alford, Westcott and Hort] read: πολλοὶ δέ, instead of καὶ πολλοί, in accordance with important authorities. [א. B. C. D. L. X., etc.]

[19]Joh_11:19.—Lachmann [Alford, Westc. and H.], in accordance with B. C. L. [also Cod. Sin.] read: πρὸς τὴν M., etc. [The text. rec. and Tischend., ed. 8th, read πρὸζ τὰζ περὶ M., to those who were around Martha and Mary. The allusion seems to be to the custom of a company of comforters collecting themselves around mourners. The expression is foreign to the N. T. See Exeg.—P. S.]

[20]Joh_11:19.—Tischendorf omits αὐτῶν in accordance with the B. D. L. [So also Cod. Sin., Alford, Westc. & H.—P. S.]

[21]Joh_11:21.—Different placings of the words. Tischendorf: οὐκ ἄν ὁ ἀδελφός μου ἐτεθνήκει. [So formerly; but in his 8th crit. ed. 1869, Tischendorf gives—οὐκ ἄν ἀπέθανεν ὁ ἀδελφός μου. Ἀπέθ. is in accordance with Joh_11:32, supported by Cod. Sin. B. C.* D. K. L. X. II., etc., and is also adopted by Westcott & Hort; while Alford prefers ἐτεθνήκει, would have died.—P. S.].

[22]Joh_11:22.—Ἀλλά is wanting in B. C., etc. [The proper reading is καὶ νῦν, and is now preferred by Tischend. ἀλλα καὶ νῦν.—P. S.].

[23]Joh_11:27.—[πεπίστευκα is the proper reading adopted by all the critical editors; πιστεύω is poorly supported.—P. S.]

[24]Joh_11:29.—[Tischendorf, ed. 8th, reads ἐγείρεται and ἐρχεται, but Alford, Westcott and Hort retain the reading of the text. rec. ἠγέρθη and ἤρχετο, which is sustained by Cod. Sin. and B. The historical present is more lively, but may be an emendation.—P. S.]

[25]Joh_11:31.—[Δόξαντες is abundantly sustained by א. B. C.* D. L. X. Verss., and now generally adopted instead of the λέγοντες of the text. rec.—P. S.]

[26]Joh_11:33.—[It is perhaps impossible to find a precise equivalent in English for the Greek ἐμβριμάομαι in the sense in which it is used here and in Joh_11:38. See the Exeg., pp. 352 f.—P. S.]

[27]Joh_11:39.—Τετελευτηκότος established by A. B. C.* Sin., etc., against the τεθνηκότος of the Recepta.

[28]Joh_11:39.—[The Saxon stinketh for ὄζει is no doubt a repulsive term for a repulsive thing, but for this reason also more expressive than is offensive (Noyes, Conant and others) or similar modern substitutes.—P. S.]

[29]Joh_11:41.—In accordance with B. C.* Sin. and others, the sentence: οὗ ἧν ὁ τεθνηκὼς κείμενος must be omitted.

[30][Buttmann, N. T. Gr., p. 133, derives this peculiar position of ἀπό and πρό in indications of space and time from the influence of the Latin. Comp. Joh_12:1, πρὸ ἔξ ἡμερῶν τοῦ πάσχα 21:8; Rev_14:20.—P. S.]

[31][Alford almost verbally copies this note from Meyer. We have good reason to infer from several indications that the family of Bethany was “one of large hospitality and acquaintance.” Comp. Joh_12:3; Joh_12:5 and note.—P. S.]

[32][So also Meyer, and Alford who remarks that ἀναστήσεται is pedagogically used to lead on to the requisite faith in her mind, and doubts whether it could be used of a recall into human life. Hengstenberg refers the word mainly to the final resurrection, and subordinately to the translation to Paradise, which he includes in the first resurrection (Rev_20:5?); but Lazarus must have been already in Paradise (comp. to-day in Luk_23:43).—P. S.]

[33][The phrase οὐ μή—εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα, Joh_11:26, is in itself ambiguous and may mean either not forever, or never. The first and literal rendering would give a very plain sense: He that liveth (physically) and believelh in Me, will not die (physically) for ever, i.e. will be raised again. But in all other passages in which the same phrase occurs (Joh_4:14; Joh_8:51-52; Joh_10:28; Joh_13:8; 1Co_8:13), it is equivalent to never, like the Hebrew לֹא־לְעוֹלָם (Psa_55:22; Pro_10:30), with an emphasis on the negation: surely not, in no wise, by no means (see Winer, p. 407, on the force of the double negation in Greek). We must then suppose that Christ in Joh_11:26 either spoke of spiritual death, or overlooked physical death as a vanishing transition to real and eternal life.—P. S. ]

[34][Comp. Godet in loc. (II. 333), who justly says that it is impossible here to separate the moral and the physical sense in the words resurrection and life. I subjoin the remarks of Trench (Miracles, p. 322) on this glorious declaration: “l am the Resurrection and the Life; the true Life, the true Resurrection; the everlasting triumphs over death, they are in Me—no distant things, as thou spakest of now, to find place at the end of the world; no things separate or separable from Me, as thou spakest of lately, when thou desiredst that I should ask of another that which I possess evermore in Myself. In Me is victory over the grave, in Me is life eternal: by faith in Me that becomes yours which makes death not to be death, but only the transition to a higher life.”—P. S.]

[35][Alford: “Her calling her sister is characteristic of one who (Luk_10:40) had not been much habituated herself to listen to His instructions, but knew this to be the delight of Mary. Besides this, she evidently has hopes raised, though of a very faint and indefinite kind. προσδοκήσασά τι ἀγαθὸν ἀπὸ τῶν λόγως αὐτοῦ (Euthymius.”)—]

[36][So also correctly Alford and Godet.—P. S.]

[37][Lange translates: regte sich tief auf im Geiste, stirred Himelf up in His spirit; Noyes and Alford: was greatly moved in His spirit. The E. V. groaned in spirit, expresses more the feeling of grief and pain than of indignation and wrath (though Trench on Miracles, p. 325, strangely asserts the very reverse); comp. 2Co_5:4 : “We that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened.” Webster defines groaning: “to give forth a low, moaning sound, to utter a mournful voice, as in pain and sorrow,” and says nothing of anger. The E. V. translates the verb in four different ways: to charge straitly, Mat_9:30; Mar_1:43; to murmur, Mar_14:5; to groan, Joh_11:33; Joh_11:38.—P. S.]

[38][So the Vulgate: infremuit spiritu; Luther: Er ergrimmetc im Geiste, was wroth at, moved with indignation. βριμάομαι and ἐμβριμάομαι (from the root βρέμω, to rush, to roar, φριμάω, fremo, to roar, to bluster; comp. βρίμη, anger, βριμώ, The Angered, a name of Persephone or Hecate), when not used of uttering a sound (snorting, murmuring), always express an emotion of anger or indignation, and are equivalent to ὀργίζεσθαι and ἀπειλεῖν. Passow and Pape know no other meaning. Gumlich has abundantly proved it in the Studien und Kritiken for 1862, pp. 260–269. Sophocles, in his Lexicon of Byzantine Greek (Boston, 1870, p. 453), gives the meaning to be greatly moved, but without any authority except the two passages in John 11, which are under dispute. Meyer confidently asserts (p. 431): “Nie anders als vom heftigen Zorn (violent anger) wird βριμάομαι und ἐμβριμάομαι, wo es nicht das eigentliche Schnauben oder Brummen (Aesch. Sept. 461, Luc. Necym. 20) bezeichnet, bei Griechen, LXX. und im N. T. (Mat_9:30; Mar_1:43; Mar_14:5) gebraucht. S. Gumlich, p. 265 f.” Hengstenberg agrees: “Es ist längst festgestellt, dass ἐμβριμᾶσθαι keinen anderen Affect bezeichnen kann als den des heftigen Zornes.” Alford: “ἐμβριμάομαι can bear but one meaning, that of indignor (‘infremuit,’ Vulg.),—the expression of indignation and rebuke, not of sorrow.” Trench (p. 325): “It is nothing but the difficulty of finding a satisfactory object for the indignation of the Lord, which has caused so many modern commentators to desert this explanation, and make the word simply and merely an expression of grief and anguish of spirit. Lampe and Kuinoel defend the right explanation; and Lange (Theol. Studien und Kritiken, 1836, p. 714 sq.) has many beautiful remarks in an essay wherein he seeks to unite both meanings.” Godet: “Il est généralement reconnu, à cette heure, que le terme ἐμβοιμᾶσθαι (de βριμάζειν hennir, rugir) ne peut désigner qu’ un frémissement d’ indignation.” But all this does not yet settle the precise meaning in this verse. See below. The verb is generally transitive and constructed with the dative of the person or thing against which the angry feeling or rebuke is directed; but here and in Joh_11:38 it is used intransitively; πνεύματι being not the dat. obj., but the dat. instrum. or loci.—P. S.]

[39][The Greek interpreters usually take τῷ πνεύματι=τῷ πάθει (as dative of the object), but Cyril refers it (as instrumental dative) to the Holy Ghost or the divine nature of Christ, by which He indignantly rebuked His rising human sympathy. (ἐμβριμᾶται τῷ πνεύματι,τουτέστι τῇ δυνάμει τοῦ ἁγίου πνεύματος ἐπιπλήττει τρὸπον τινὰ τῇ ἰδίᾳ σαρκί.) In a milder form Dean Alford renews the Greek interpretation without its stoic repulsiveness. He thinks that Jesus, with the tears of sympathy already rising and overcoming His speech, checked them so as to be able to speak the words following. He considers this self-restraint as merely physical, requiring indeed an act of the will, and a self-troubling, but implying no deliberate disapproval of the rising emotion which immediately after is suffered to prevail. Webster and Wilkinson likewise explain ἐνεβριμήσατο of a violent repression of emotion. But this is clearly refuted by the explanatory ἐτάραξεν ἑαυτόν, and by the fact that Jesus did shed tears immediately afterwards. His effort at self-restraint then would have failed, which is incredible.—P. S.]

[40][According to Augustine, Cornelius a Lap., Olshausen, Trench and Gumlich, Christ was indignant at death as the wages of sin; according to Nic. Lyra, Melanchthon, Ebrard, Luthardt and Hengstenberg, at the power of death, the terrible foe of the human race, who dared here to confront and threaten his great Conqueror. Nic. Lyra: Fremitus Christi procedebat ex indignatione ejus contra diabolum, per cujus suggestionem mors intravit in mundum, quam erat cito debellaturus. To the same effect is Luthardt’s remark (II. p. 217): “Ueber den Tod und den der des Todes Gewal that, Seinen Gegner von Anfang an, ergrimmte Er, dass er lhm solches angerichtet, so in Seinen nädchsten Kreis gedrungen und so lhm Selbst wie drohend enigegengetreten war. Und das Ergrimmen Jesu ist wie ein Gegendrohen, das sich in der Autferweckung dann versinnbildlichte. Es sind gleichsam die ersten gegenseitigen Ankündigungen des letsten äussersten Kampfes.” Comp. my notes to Lange’s view below.—P. S.]

[41][Meyer urges the preceding words ὡς εἶδεν αὐτήν κλαίουσαυ—καὶ τοὺς Ἰονδαίους κλαίοντας, as indicating this contrast and cause of the indignation; but this is not applicable to the second use of the verb in Joh_11:38, although Joh_11:37 clearly shows that the indignation must have had some reference to the unbelief of the Jews.—P. S.]

[42][As now used, however, ergrimmen always signifies in German violent emotion of anger, indignation.—P. S.]

[43][Tholuck and Lücke refer to βριμάσσω, to shake with petulance, βράσσω, to ferment (intransitive), and to shake violently (transitive), also to the Hebrew זָעַף.—P. S.]

[44][Among American commentators, Owen takes this view: A deep feeling of grief, and not a rebuking of such a feeling.—P. S.]

[45][Ewald (Com. I. 323) translates: Er erbrauste im Geiste und erschütterte sich, and explains that Jesus, like a hero of old, like a Jacob, gathering up the deepest powers of his mind, went forth to the conflict and in the conflict burst out in tears. Comp. Ewald’s Life of Christ, p. 486.—P. S.]

[46][Dr. Lange has more fully demonstrated this comprehensive interpretation in a treatise on the words: ἐνεβριμήσατο τῷ πνεύματι , in his Miscellaneous Writings, vol. iv. pp. 194 ff. (originally published in the Theological Studies and Criticisms for 1836); comp. also his Leben Jesu, II. 2, p. 1125. Tholuck (7th edition) substantially adopts Lange’s interpretation: “We shall, then, include a feeling of horror also. etc. Hence we assume κινεῖσθαι to be the established philological signification, as one of the most ancient commentators, the translator of the Peshito has done.”]

[47][Meyer thinks that John might as well have written τῇ ψυχῇ (12:27); Godet (I. 329) distinguishes πνεῦμα. as the seat of religious, ψυχή as the seat of natural emotions. There is certainly a difference. Here and 13:21, when speaking of the treason of Judas, and Mar_8:12, Jesus was moved in the spirit; while when speaking of His approaching passion He says: “My soul is troubled,” Joh_12:27.—P. S.]

[48][Neander: “The sympathizing physician in the midst of a family drowned in grief—will not his tears flow with theirs, though he knows that he has the power of giving immediate relief?”—P. S.]

[49] [After the appearance of Christianity, the heathen notions about the rightfulness of human affections underwent a silent revolution, and the rigor of Stoicism was broken. Comp the beautiful passage in Juvenal, Sat. 15, quoted by Trench:

. …Molissima corda

Humano generi dare se natura fatetur,

Quæ lacrymas dedit: hæc nostri pars optima

sensüs.—P. S.]

[50][Alford and Godet take the same view. The second emotion of indignation (πάλιν ἐμβριμώμενος ἐν ἑαυτῷ, Joh_11:38) seems to have been provoked, partly at least, by this exhibition of unbelief, as the οὖν indicates.—P. S.]

[51][Trench, Alford and Godet rightly regard it as a mark of historical accuracy that these dwellers in Jerusalem should refer to a miracle performed there and still fresh in their memory rather than to the former raisings of the dead in distant Galilee, which they probably may have heard of, but naturally would not thoroughly credit on mere rumor. Says Trench: “A maker up of the narrative from later and insecure traditions would inevitably have fallen upon those miracles of a like kind, as arguments of the power of Jesus to have accomplished this.” Comp. the pointed remarks of Godet (II. 342) against Strauss.—P. S.]

[52][Also the art. Gräber in Winer’s R. W. B., art. Tomb in Smith’s B. D. (Hackett and Abbott’s ed., vol. iv. pp. 3277 ff.), Robinson, Researches, I. pp. 349 ff., and Capt. C. W. Wilson, Remains of Tombs in Palestine (in Quarterly Statement of the Palest. Exploration Soc, Lond. 1869). The Jewish sepulchres were out of town, away from the living, and either natural caverns or artificial, excavated by man’s labor from the rock, with recesses in the sides, wherein the bodies were laid, occasionally with chambers one above another, and closed by a door or a great stone to prevent the numerous jackals and beasts of prey from tearing the bodies. Many of these tombs still remain. Robinson, I. p. 352: “The numerous sepulchres which skirt the valleys on the north, east, and south of Jerusalem, exhibit for the most part one general mode of construction. A doorway in the perpendicular face of the rock, usually small and without ornament, leads to one or more small chambers excavated from the rock, and commonly upon the same level with the door. Very rarely are the chambers lower than the doors. The walls in general are plainly hewn; and there are occasionally, though not always, niches or resting-places for the dead bodies. In order to obtain a perpendicular face for the doorway, advantage was sometimes taken of a former quarry; or an angle was cut in the rock with a tomb in each face; or a square niche or area was hewn out in a ledge, and then tombs excavated in all three of its sides. All these expedients are seen particularly in the northern part of the valley of Jehoshaphat, and near the tombs of the Judges. Many of the doorways and fronts of the tombs along this valley are now broken away, leaving the whole of the interior exposed.”—P. S.]

[53][Robinson (vol. I. p. 432, Am. ed.) says: “The monks, as a matter of course, show the house of Mary and Martha, that of Simon the leper, and the sepulchre of Lazarus. The latter is a deep vault like a cellar, excavated in the lime-stone rock in the middle of the village, to which there is a descent by twenty-six steps. It is hardly necessary to remark, that there is not the slightest probability of its ever having been the tomb of Lazarus. The form is not that of the ancient sepulchres; nor does its position accord with the narrative of the New Testament, which implies that the tomb was not in the town.”—P. S.]

[54][Meyer leaves it undecided whether ἐπί here is to be rendered upon or against, before, the cave: “ἐπέκ. ἐπ’ αὐτῷ kann auch heissen: er lag davor, (vgl. Homer, Od. vi. 19: θύραι δ’ ἐπέκειντο), so dass ein horizontaler Eingang gedacht sein würde. Zu entscheiden ist nicht.”—P. S.]

[55][Olshausen, Luthardt and Trench agree with Lange that the words ἤδη ὄζει, which were spoken before the opening of the tomb, indicate only the conjecture of Martha, which was erroneous, and assume that He who sees the end from the beginning watched over the body of Lazarus in His providence that it should not hasten to corruption. But the fathers (e.g. Augustine: resuscitavit putenten), Calvin (alios Christus suscitavit sed nunc in putrido cadavere potentiam, suam exserit) Stier, Owen, Alford and Wordsworth take the judgment of Martha as a statement of a sensible fact, on the ground that the very act of death is the beginning of decomposition, and that there is no more monstrosity in the raising of a decaying corpse than in the restoration of the withered hand. Godet also is of this opinion: “II est plus naturel de voir dans ces mots I’ expression d’ un fait positif et dont elle a fait elle-même I’ experience.” As an expression of fact it has been turned to apologetic account against the hypothesis of a mere trance or swoon; but the miracle is sufficiently attested without this by the veracity of Christ and of John.—P. S.]

[56][So also Meyer and Alford. Others suppose that petition and thanksgiving coincided (Merz, Tholuck), still others that Jesus thanked in anticipation of the miracle as if it was already an accomplished fact (Godet, comp. Hengstenberg).—P. S.]

[57][Trench (p. 330): “The power (of working miracles) was most truly His own, not indeed in disconnection from the Father, for what He saw the Father do, that only He did; but in this, His oneness with the Father, there lay the uninterrupted power of doing these mighty works… . The thanks to God were an acknowledgment that the power was from God.”—P. S.]

[58][Baur calls the prayer a Scheingebet, Weisse a Schaugebet, conceived by the evangelist in the apologetic interest for the divinity of Christ (Strauss, Scholten). Such impious nonsense arises from utter ignorance of the singular intimacy between Christ and the Father, which is so often asserted in this Gospel (Joh_5:19-21; Joh_5:36-37; Joh_8:16; Joh_8:18; Joh_8:29; Joh_8:42; Joh_10:25; Joh_10:30; Joh_10:38) and illustrated on this occasion. By virtue of this intimacy He, the only Begotten, never addressed God as “our Father,” but as “My Father” or “Father” simply, and stood in constant communication with Him so that His prayers assumed, as it were, the character of reflection and mutual consultation, and were always answered.—P. S.]

[59][So also Godet: “En rendant grâces à Dieu devant tout le peuple avant de faire le miracle, Jésus met positivement Dieu en part dans l’ æuvre qui va se faire; cette æuvre devient par Ià celle de Dieu même. Jehovah, le Dieu d’ Israel, sera désormais le garant de sa mission,—ou le complice de son imposture.”—P. S.]

[60][So also Hilary (nullo intervallo vocis et vitæ), Meyer, Alford, Trench. So in the general resurrection the dead will come forth from their graves when they hear the quickening voice of the Son of Man, Joh_5:28-29; comp. the “shout,” 1Th_4:16; and “the last trump,” 1Co_15:52.—P. S.]

[61][Also Augustine: processit ille vinctus: non ergo pedibus propriis, sed virtute producentis.]

[62][So also Meyer, Trench, Owen, Alford is uncertain.—P. S.]

[63][Dr. Lange omits the disgraceful explanation of Renan, who here resorts to the theory of a downright imposture. See above, p. 339.—P. S.]

[64][Is not the address recorded in these verses simply a thanksgiving spoken in respect of a previously offered private prayer? Is it not probable that the prayer was being offered during the period of delay beyond Jordan, throughout the travel to Bethany, and in the groanings at the sepulcher?—E. R. C.]

Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical), ed. John Peter Lange, English translation edited by Philip Schaff (1864–1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

11:17 People were buried on the same day as their death. John noted that Lazarus had been in his grave for four days, so the miracle could not be construed as resuscitation.

Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Joh_11:17. Ἐλθών] into the neighbourhood of Bethany, see Joh_11:30. That Jesus went by the direct road, may be taken for granted in view of the end He had before Him; to insert here events from the Synoptic Gospels for harmonistic purposes, only causes confusion.

εὗρεν] namely, after inquiry.

τέσσαρας] As we must assume that Lazarus did not die before the day on which the words of Joh_11:7 ff. were spoken, whilst Jesus was made at once and directly aware of the departure of His friend, then, if the Lord, as is probable, commenced the journey on the same day, and if Lazarus, agreeably to the Jewish custom, was buried on the day of his death, two full days and parts of two other days (the first and fourth) must have been spent in travelling to Bethany. No material objection can be urged against this supposition, seeing that we do not know how far northwards in Peraea Jesus was sojourning when He received the message announcing the illness. The usual opinionstill entertained even by Luthardt, Ebrard, Gumlich, Hengstenberg, Godetis, that Lazarus died and was buried on the very day on which Jesus received the message. Were this the case, Jesus must have remained that day and the two following in Peraea, and have first begun the journey on the fourth day (a journey which some suppose to have occupied merely ten or eleven hours, or even a shorter time),[80] and completed it on the same (Ebrard) or on the following day. On this supposition, however, Jesus would either not have known of the death of His friend before the third day, which would be quite opposed to the character and wording (Joh_11:4; Joh_11:6) of the narrative; or else He would know of it as soon as it happened, and therefore at the time of the arrival of the messenger, which would alone accord with the tone of the entire history; in this latter case, the two days postponement of His departure, which, notwithstanding He had resolved on, would be unnatural and aimless, and the words of Joh_11:4, which treat the sickness of Lazarus as still continuing, would have been inappropriate. Correctly, therefore, have Bengel (on Joh_11:11 with the comparison of Joh_4:52) and Ewald fixed the death of Lazarus as contemporaneous with Joh_11:7-8, so that the occurrence of the death and the knowledge thereof possessed by Jesus determined His leaving at once. They would then have arrived at Bethany on the fourth day (comp. on Joh_1:28).

[80] But see van der Velde, Reise durch Syr. u. Pal. II. p. 245 ff. The actual road was undoubtedly considerably longer than the distance in a straight line.

Meyer — Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament — English translation by Peter Christie, edited by Frederick Crombie (T&T Clark, 1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Joh 11:17-44 . The raising of Lazarus .

Joh 11:17 . Ἐλθὼν οὖν ὁ Ἰησοῦς εὗρεν . “When, then, Jesus came, He found,” implying that He did not know before, but learned from some in Bethany, αὐτὸν τέσσαρας ἡμέρας ἤδη ἔχοντα ἐν τῶ μνημείῳ “that he had been four days already in the tomb”. Raphel and Wetstein give instances of this construction, and see Joh 5:5 . According to Jewish custom burial took place on the day of death, so that, allowing somewhat more than one day for the journey from the one Bethany to the other, it seems probable that Lazarus died about the time the messenger reached Jesus. At Joh 11:39 the time which had elapsed since death is mentioned for a different reason. Here it seems to be introduced to account for Joh 11:19 ; as also is the statement ἦν δὲ Βηθανία [ ἡ deleted by Tisch [77] and W.H [78] ] ἐγγὺς τῶν Ἱεροσολύμων , ὡς ἀπὸ σταδίων δεκαπέντε , within easy walking distance of Jerusalem, about fifteen furlongs off. The form is a Latinism, used in later Greek instead of ὡς σταδίους δεκαπέντε ἀπὸ τῶν Ἱεροσολύμων ; cf. Joh 12:1 , Joh 21:8 , Rev 14:20 . The nearness of Bethany accounts for the fact that πολλοὶ … αὐτῶν , “many of the Jews had come out to Martha and Mary”. Of visits of condolence we have a specimen in Job. “Deep mourning was to last for seven days, of which the first three were those of ‘weeping’. During these seven days it was, among other things, forbidden to wash, to anoint oneself, to put on shoes, to study, or to engage in any business. After that followed a lighter mourning of thirty days.” Edersheim, Jewish Social Life , an interesting chapter on In Death and after Death . Cf. Gen 50:3 ; Num 20:29 ; 1Sa 28:13 . Specimens of the manifestations of grief in various heathen countries and of the things said ὑπὸ τῶν παραμυθουμένων are given by Lucian in his tract Concerning Grief .

[77] Tischendorf.

[78] Westcott and Hort.

The Expositor's Greek Testament, edited by W. Robertson Nicoll (1897–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

when Jesus came, he found that he had lain in the grave four days--If he died on the day the tidings came of his illness--and was, according to the Jewish custom, buried the same day (see JAHN'S Archæology, and Joh 11:39; Act 5:5-6, Act 5:10) --and if Jesus, after two days' further stay in Perea, set out on the day following for Bethany, some ten hours' journey, that would make out the four days; the first and last being incomplete [MEYER].

Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Verse 17. He had lain in the grave four days already.] Our Lord probably left Bethabara the day, or the day after, Lazarus died. He came to Bethany three days after; and it appears that Lazarus had been buried about four days, and consequently that he had been put in the grave the day or day after he died. Though it was the Jewish custom to embalm their dead, yet we find, from Joh 11:39, that he had not been embalmed; and God wisely ordered this, that the miracle might appear the more striking.

Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

(17) Then when Jesus came—i.e., to the neighbourhood of Bethany. He did not at once enter the village itself (Joh_11:20; Joh_11:30).

He found that he had lain in the grave four days already.—The Jewish custom was to bury on the day of death. (Comp. Act_5:6-10.) The whole tone of the narrative places the time of death at the point indicated by the summons to go into Judæa, in Joh_11:7 (see Note there). Counting the parts of the days on which they set out and on which they arrived as included in the four days, in accordance with the Jewish method, we have two whole days and parts of two other days spent upon the journey. There is no indication that they halted on the way, but everything suggests rather that they went as quickly as possible. The common view, which supposes the place where John was baptising to have been on the southern Jordan, cannot be made consistent with this long journey; and it is usual to assume that Lazarus died on the day that the message reached the Lord, that after his death our Lord remained two days where He was, and that the fourth day was occupied on the journey to Bethany. It is believed that the meaning of the narrative is brought out more fully by the interpretation which has been followed above, and that the four days for the journey is perfectly natural on the supposition which has been adopted, that the journey was from Tellanihje, which was north of the Sea of Galilee.

A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

17. Then when Jesus came] Better, When therefore Jesus came, not to the house, nor to Bethany, but to the vicinity (Joh_11:20; Joh_11:30). In Joh_11:16 also ‘then’ should be therefore, S. John’s favourite particle to express a sequence in fact.

he found] i.e. on enquiry. It would seem as if Christ’s miraculous power of knowing without the ordinary means of information was not in constant activity, but like His other miraculous powers was employed only on fitting occasions. It was necessary to His work that He should know of Lazarus’ death; it was not necessary that He should know how long he had been buried, nor where he had been buried (Joh_11:34). Comp. Joh_1:48, Joh_4:18. Similarly, Peter’s prison-gate opens ‘of its own accord;’ Mary’s house-door does not (Act_12:10-16).

in the grave] Or, in the sepulchre. Our translators use three different English words for the same Greek word; ‘grave’ in this chapter Joh_5:28; Mat_27:52, &c.; ‘tomb’ Mat_8:28; Mar_5:2; Mar_6:29, &c.; ‘sepulchre’ of Christ’s resting-place. ‘Sepulchre’ would be best in all cases. Another Greek word for ‘tomb’ used by S. Matthew only is rendered ‘tomb’ Mat_23:29, and ‘sepulchre’ Mat_23:27, Mat_27:61; Mat_27:64; Mat_27:66, Mat_28:1.

four days] No doubt he had been buried the day he died, as is usual in hot climates where decomposition is rapid; moreover, he had died of a malignant disease, probably a fever. Jehu ordered Jezebel to be buried a few hours after death (2Ki_9:34); Ananias and Sapphira were buried at once (Act_5:6; Act_5:10). If Christ started just after Lazarus died, as seems probable, the journey had occupied four days. This fits in well with the conclusion that Bethabara or Bethany was in the north of Palestine, possibly a little south of the Sea of Galilee; near Galilee it must have been (comp. Joh_1:28-29; Joh_1:43). But on the other hand Lazarus may have died soon after Christ heard of his illness; in which case the journey occupied barely two days.

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Then when Jesus came,.... The Alexandrian copy, and all the Oriental versions add, "to Bethany"; though it seems by what follows, that he was not come to the town itself, but near it; and it looks as if it was not far from Lazarus's grave; and it was usual to bury without the city; and here he had intelligence of his, Lazarus's, death, and how long he had been dead:

for he found he had lain in the grave four days already; it is very likely that he died the same day that Mary and Martha sent to Christ to acquaint him with his sickness, and the same day he was buried; for the Jews used to bury the same day a person died, and so they do now: and after Christ had this account, he stayed two days where he was, and on the third day, he proposed to his disciples to go into Judea; and very probably on that, or on the next day, which was the fourth, they set out and came to Bethany; See Gill on Joh 11:39.

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

17 Then when Jesus came, he found that he had lain in the grave four days already.

Ver. 17. That he had lain in the grave four days] So that he might seem now to come too late. The faith of the two sisters must needs be much shaken, to see their brother dead, though Christ had sent them word he should not die. Hold out, faith and patience, God will be seen in the mount; he usually reserves his hand for a dead lift, when our faith begins to flag and hang the wing, when our strength is gone, and we have given up all for lost. "Now will I arise, saith the Lord; now will I be exalted; now will I lift up myself," Isa 33:10.

John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

In the grave - It was sometimes the custom to embalm the dead, but in this case it does not seem to have been done. He was probably buried soon after death.

Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

Christ came to Bethany where Lazarus died; he found he had lain in the grave four days; so as probably Christ came not to Bethany till four days or more after the death of Lazarus, or near upon. But possibly it is better judged by others, that Christ was not yet come into Bethany, but only to the place where he met Martha; because it is said after this, Joh 11:30, that Jesus was not yet come into the town, but was in that place where Martha met him; which it is probable was at Lazarus’s sepulchre, out of the town, but near it, as all the Jewish burying places were; where he heard from the relation of Martha how long Lazarus had been buried. Our Saviour could have come sooner had he pleased, for though Bethabara was on the other side of Jordan, (so out of the confines of Judea), yet, if we may give any credit to those who have laboured in the study of places, it was not above four miles off Jerusalem, so as it could not be six miles from Bethany, which our Saviour could have travelled in a less time than four or five days. Some think Lazarus died the same day news came to Christ of his sickness; after which we read, Joh 11:6, that he stirred not of two days; after which it was, Joh 11:7, that he took up thoughts of going into Judea. After this, possibly, he lingered one or two days; Joh 11:14, he tells them Lazarus was dead. Our Saviour was willing to protract the time, that the miracle might be more conspicuous and remarkable.

Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

17. Four days—Reckoning the day on which he died as one; Jesus remained two days; and one day of journey made four.

Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Vers. 17-32. (2) Human affection drawing from Christ the assertion and promise, "I AM THE RESURRECTION AND THE LIFE.

So; or, thereupon; for oun not infrequently indicates the relation between two narratives, as well as between two state-meats or arguments. When Jesus came into the neighborhood of the village (see ver. 30), he found, on inquiry, that he (Lazarus) alreadyduring four days had beenin the grave; or literally, had had four days. These four days are differently counted. Alford, Luthardt, Hengstenberg, Lange, Gorier, Westcott, and Moulton believe that this mention proves that Lazarus died and was buried on the day on which the message was sent, which, if it took one day to deliver, and if one day had been consumed in the return of Jesus, would leave the other two days as those of the delay in Peraea. Meyer and Ewald, with Bengel and Watkins, think that he died at the conclusion of the delay, that Jesus became aware of it, and told his disciples of it, and spent the two days, or parts of them, in the journey; that on the fourth day he reached Bethany. The former and usual view is the more obvious one, although it must turn ultimately on the position of Bethany beyond Jordan. If the recent speculations of the Palestine Exploration Society and Caspari be correct, the distance between the two Bethanys may have required at least two days for the journey, and therefore favors the latter interpretation. If Bethany (Bethabara) be near Jericho, the distance between them would be much less, and the former and usual reckoning must prevail.

Vers. 17-27. Jesus and Martha.

Our Lord had at last come to the neighborhood of Bethany, but not to the village itself.

I THE CONDOLENCE OF THE JEWS WITH THE BEREAVED SISTERS. "And many of the Jews came to Martha and Mary to comfort them concerning their brother.

1. This visit of sympathy implies that the family at Bethany was well known and highly respected by the Jews of Jerusalem.

2. It afforded a providential opportunity to Jesus for the working of his last miracle in sight of the Jews.

3. The time of bereavement is the time that demands all the resources of consolation. The days of mourning were divided among the Jews into three periods of three days of weeping, seven days of lamentation, and twenty days of sorrow.

II THE INTERVIEW BETWEEN JESUS AND MARTHA. "Then Martha, as soon as she heard that Jesus was coming, went and met him: but Mary sat in the house." The different character of the two sisters is revealed in these words.

1. Martha would evidently be the first to receive the news of Christ"s coming. Not so much, perhaps, because the message would be first brought to her as the mistress of the house, as because, going about the house in the busy routine of her life, she would be in the way of first receiving intelligence.

2. Marys profound feeling, that made her a better listener than Martha, makes her a more helpless sufferer now. She sits still in the house. She is not so capable as Martha of shaking off her depression at once.

3. Martha"s address to our Lord shows that she is not so overwhelmed by grief as to prevent her utterance. Lord, if thou hadst been here, our brother had not died.

(1) This is not the language of complaint, for she does not say, "Lord, if thou hadst come, our brother had not died." She must have known that Lazarus was dead before the tidings could have reached the Lord.

(2) It is the simple language of faith and love; for she seems to say that death could not have entered the happy home at Bethany in the face of Divine power and Divine love. She is even sure that now he was able to restore her departed brother to life. "Whatsoever thou wilt ask of God, God will give it thee." She remembered, no doubt, the two Galilaean miracles of resurrection.

4. Our Lord"s answer to Martha"s touching appeal. "Thy brother shall rise again.

(1) He alludes evidently to the miracle about to be performed.

(2) A belief in the resurrection of pious Jews was already familiar, as an inauguration of the reign of the Messiah, from the language of Daniel (Dan_12:2) and from the Maccabees. Death is not the final conqueror.

5. Martha s apparent misunderstanding of his saying. "I know that he shall rise again in the resurrection at the last day.

(1) Her rejoinder, marked by a spirit of mournful resignation, goes back upon the belief of the final resurrection, which, however, had no direct bearing upon her present bereavement. There is an evident touch of disappointment in her words.

6. Jesus as the Resurrection and the Life.

(1) He is the Resurrection,

(a) as he is "the First-Begotten from the dead"; (Col_1:18)

(b) as he is the Author or Cause of the resurrection of believers: "I will raise him up at the last day"; (Joh_6:54)

(c) as his resurrection involves their resurrection. (1Co_15:23)

(2) He is the Life. Jesus goes beyond resurrection to life itself.

(a) He is eternal Life.

(b) He gives his life for his people.

(c) He is the Life of his people. (Col_3:3)

(d) His life in glory is the guarantee of the believer"s life. "Because I live, ye shall live also.

(e) He is the Life of both soul and body in the resurrection. (Rom_8:11)

(3) Faith which unites the believer to Christ admits of no severance by death. "He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall be live." This sentence might apply to Lazarus in his tomb. As a true believer, though now in the power of death, he would yet be restored to life. Or it might apply, generally, to sinners who accept Christ as Savior.

(a) They are dead in sin. (Eph_2:1)

(b) Yet when quickened by God"s Spirit they believe upon Christ.

(c) And their faith ensures life spiritual and everlasting. "And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.

(i) The faith and life are regarded as equivalent terms, because they are inseparably joined together.

(ii) Death cannot break the continuity of Christian life. The second death does not touch it at all.

7. Martha"s triumphant faith. Jesus says, "Believest thou this? She said unto him, Yea, Lord, I believe that thou art the Christ, the Son of God, which should come into the world.

(1) This was a prompt and full acceptance of the revelation just made to her.

(2) It marks likewise the foundation upon which that revelation rested.

(a) Jesus was Christ, the end of the theocratic prophecies and promises;

(b) the Son of God, dwelling in mysterious relation with God, and therefore able to act as Daysman between God and man, and restore the long-broken fellowship;

(c) making the world the theatre of his Divine power in resurrection and life. Her confession was the simple but profound acknowledgment of Jesus as the Resurrection and the Life.

The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

The faith of Martha:

v. 17. Then when Jesus came, He found that he had lain in the grave four days already.

v. 18. Now Bethany was nigh unto Jerusalem, about fifteen furlongs off;

v. 19. and many of the Jews came to Martha and Mary to comfort them concerning their brother.

v. 20. Then Martha, as soon as she heard that Jesus was coming, went and met Him; but Mary sat still in the house.

v. 21. Then said Martha unto Jesus, Lord, if Thou hadst been here, my brother had not died.

v. 22. But I know that even now, whatsoever Thou wilt ask of God, God will give it Thee.

The journey from that section of Perea where Jesus had been staying to Bethany took about two days, and when Jesus therefore reached the town, He was greeted with the intelligence that Lazarus had been in the grave four days. The burial of the dead in warmer countries must take place very quickly, lest decay set in. In the house of Martha and Mary there was a large assembly of mourners and sympathizers. Since the distance from Jerusalem was only fifteen staid, a matter of a little more than 3,000 yards, many Jews from the capital city had come to the sisters to express their condolence in their bereavement. It seems that Mary and Martha had a host of acquaintances, if not of friends, in Jerusalem. The days of deep mourning lasted for seven days, during which it was forbidden to wash, to anoint oneself, to put on shoes, to study, or to engage in any business. Just as soon as the news of Christ’s coming had been conveyed to Martha, she left the house to meet Him. She was eager to hear words of comfort out of His mouth; for mere men cannot take away the sorrow of death. But the comfort and sympathy of Jesus is of a nature to drive away all the piercing pain or grief. If people, in every bereavement and sorrow, would only turn at once to the consolation of the Lord’s Word, there would never be the severe after-effects of unrestrained grief after the manner of this world, 1Th 4:13. Mary remained at home, sitting on the ground or on a low stool, according to Jewish custom; for all chairs and couches are reversed at the time of the burial. It was not merely her sorrow and distress that caused her to remain at home, but the fact that she wanted to give her older sister, the mistress of the house, the first opportunity to talk to the Savior. No sooner had Martha come to Jesus than she called out to Him: Lord, if Thou hadst been here, my brother would not have died. There is just the slightest shade of reproach in the words, but also the firm trust and faith in the Lord’s ability to help in all vicissitudes of life. The mere presence of Christ in the house of sickness would have banished death and its terrors. And even now, she goes on to say, she knows and is firmly convinced that every petition of Christ is heard by His heavenly Father. Martha naturally used the same expressions which she had so often heard out of the mouth of Jesus. The Lord had always referred His works to the Father, and stated that He worked at the will of the Father. So Martha also expressed her strong faith in the terms with which she had become familiar. If only a Christian has such sound foundation for his faith, resting it upon the conviction gained from the Word of Christ, then he is able to conquer anything.

Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Observe here, 1. The length of time which Christ designedly delayed before he would come to Lazarus’s grave; he was not above six miles off Bethany, being within two miles of Jerusalem, and Jerusalem within four miles of Bethabara, where Christ now was, and yet our Saviour comes not of four days; doubtless, that the miracle of Lazarus being sick, as have raised him being dead, and as easily have raised him the first day, as the fourth day; but that had not carried along with it such a full conviction of Christ’s almighty power. Therefore, that he might draw the eyes of their faith more stedfastly to behold and admire his almighty power, our Saviour defers his coming till Lazarus had been dead four days.

Observe, 2. The civil usage of mourning with those that mourned for the dead: anciently they mourned thirty days, and sometimes forty, for a dear relation, Num 20:29. During which time, neighbours and friends came to visit and relieve them in their sadness, with such consolatory arguments as they had. Christian religions doth not condemn natural affection: human passions are not sinful, if not excessive; to be above the stroke of passions is a condition equal to angels; to be in a state of sorrow without the sense of sorrow is a disposition beneath the beasts: but duly to regulate our sorrows, and set boundaries to our grief, is the wisdom, the duty, the interest, and the excellency, of a Christian. As to be above all passions will be our happiness in heaven, so to regulate and rectify our passions is a great part of our holiness on earth.

Observe, 3. Although Martha was a true mourner for the death of her brother, yet she doth not so far indulge to grief, but, upon the first notice of Christ’s approach, she arises to go forth to meet him, with a mournful moan in her mouth, Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died. But then her infirmity appeared in limiting Christ both to time and place; to place, If thou hadst been here: as if Christ could not (if he had pleased) save his life, absent as well as present.

Then to time, Now he stinketh; as if she had said, "You are come, but, alas! too late: you have staid too long, he is past recovery, the grave hath swallowed him up." As if death would not deliver up his prisoner at the command of Christ:

Oh! the imperfect compostiion of the best of saints! what a mixture of faith and infirmity is found in the holiest and best of Christians! This also farther appears in her next words, I know, that whatsoever thou shalt ask of God, he will give it thee Joh 11:22 : she seems not to believe that Christ was able to raise him by his own immediate power, but must obtain power of God to do it, as the prophets were wont to do that raised the dead. She thought Christ a person highly in God’s favour, but scarce believed him able to raise Lazarus by his own power; had her faith extended to a belief that Christ was equal with the Father, and that the fulness of the godhead dwelt in him, whe would not have questioned his power to raise him from the grave; for though Christ as Mediator did apply himself by prayer to God at the raising of dead Lazarus, an almighty power communicated with his essence from the Father, by an eternal and ineffable generation.

William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament (1700–1703) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

General Information:

Jesus is now in Bethany. These verses give background information about the setting and about what has happened before Jesus arrived. (See: Background Information)

he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days

You can translate this in an active form. AT: "he learned that people had put Lazarus in a tomb four days before" (See: Active or Passive)

fifteen stadia away

"about three kilometers away." A "stadium" is 185 meters. (See: Biblical Distance)

about their brother

Lazarus was their younger brother. AT: "about their younger brother" (See: Assumed Knowledge and Implicit Information)

translationWords

Lazarus

grave

Bethany

Jerusalem

Jew

Martha

Mary (sister of Martha)

brother

unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.

17. εὖρεν, i.e. on enquiry: comp. Joh 1:44, Joh 5:14, Joh 9:35. It would seem as if Christ’s miraculous power of knowing without the ordinary means of information was not in constant activity, but like His other miraculous powers was employed only on fitting occasions. It was necessary to His work that He should know of Lazarus’ death; it was not necessary that He should know how long he had been buried, nor where he had been buried (Joh 11:34). Comp. Joh 1:48, Joh 4:18, Joh 9:35, Joh 18:34. Thus Peter’s prison-gate opens ‘of its own accord;’ Mary’s house-door, which Rhoda could open, does not (Act 12:10-16).

τέσς. ἡμ. No doubt he had been buried the day he died, as is usual in hot climates where decomposition is rapid; moreover, he had died of a malignant disease, probably a fever. Jehu ordered Jezebel to be buried a few hours after death (2Ki 9:34); Ananias and Sapphira were buried at once (Act 5:6; Act 5:10). If Christ started just after Lazarus died, as seems probable, the journey had occupied four days. This fits in well with the conclusion that Bethabara or Bethany was in the north of Palestine, possibly a little south of the sea of Galilee; near Galilee it must have been (comp. Joh 1:28-29; Joh 1:43). But on the other hand Lazarus may have died soon after Christ heard of his illness; in which case the journey occupied barely two days.

ἐν τ. μνημείῳ. In the tomb. Our translators use three different English words for μνημεῖον; ‘grave’ in this chapter, Joh 5:28; Mat 27:52, &c.; ‘tomb’ Mat 8:28; Mar 5:2; Mar 6:29, &c.; ‘sepulchre’ of Christ’s resting-place. Τάφος, used by S. Matthew only, is rendered ‘tomb’ Mat 23:29, and ‘sepulchre’ Mat 23:27, Mat 27:61; Mat 27:64; Mat 27:66, Mat 28:1. ‘Tomb’ being reserved for μνημεῖον, τάφος might be rendered ‘sepulchre.’

Cambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges (Cambridge University Press, 1896; 21 vols, various authors incl. Carr, Maclear, Plummer, Farrar, Lumby, Moule, M. R. James, Simcox) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

17.] Jesus remained two days after the receipt of the message: one day the journey would occupy: so that Lazarus must have died on the day of the messenger’s being sent, and have been buried that evening, according to Jewish custom: see ver. 39, and Act 5:6-10.

Henry Alford, The Greek Testament (1849–1861) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

17. ἐλθὼν οὖν κτλ., “Jesus, then, having come, etc.” οὖν is resumptive, not causal.

εὗρεν αὐτὸν τέσσαρας ἤδη ἡμέρας ἔχοντα κτλ. He found Lazarus had been already four days in the tomb. For the constr. ἡμέρας ἔχειν, see on 5:5. ἤδη is om. by A*D, and its position varies in other MSS., but the weight of authority is in favour of its retention.

For the “four days,” see on v. 6 above; and cf. v. 39. The burial would have taken place as soon as possible after death (cf. Act 5:6).

Augustine (in loc.) finds allegory in the “four days”: one day of death for original sin, one for violation of natural law, one for breaking the law of Moses, and one for transgressing the Gospel. This is no more, and no less, fantastic than the efforts of modern expositors to find allegory in Jn.’s narrative.

International Critical Commentary — older volumes (1896–1929), various authors — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Had lain in the grave four days already [τεσσαρας ημερας ηδη εχοντα εν τω μνημειω] . Literally, found him having already four days in the tomb.

Marvin R. Vincent, Word Studies in the New Testament (1887–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

ADDITIONAL NOTES BY THE AMERICAN EDITOR.

Vv. 17-27.

1. The opinion of Godet is probably correct, that the death of Lazarus occurred on the day when the messenger came to Jesus from the sisters, after he had started from Bethany.

2. The persons referred to in Joh 11:19 must be regarded as belonging to the party of the rulers, because of the usual sense of the term the Jews in this Gospel. They were evidently friends of the two sisters, and had come to them for the purpose of consolation. Their minds would seem, therefore, to have been occupied at this time, as far as possible, with other feelings than those of hostility to Jesus.

3. Joh 11:22 seems to show that Martha had a hope—probably in view of the other cases which had occurred—that Jesus might now, by the exercise of miraculous power, raise her brother to life; and she understands His words in reply as not fulfilling this hope. Jesus then turns her thought to Himself.

4. The words, I am the resurrection and the life, find their explanation in what follows. The life into which faith introduces the soul is one which abides; the believer lives, even though physical death comes; he lives so truly and permanently that he never has any real experience of death in its deepest meaning; he lives, even in that he has, so to speak, the principle of the resurrection within himself. Christ is thus the source and animating principle of his inner life and the power which secures the resurrection. The resurrection is, as it were, the development of the life. He calls upon Martha to grasp this truth, and she answers the call with the declaration of her belief that He is the Christ, the Son of God. We have here, certainly, a very near approach to the words of Joh 20:31 : “But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name.”

Vv. 17-19. “Jesus on his arrival found that he had been in the tomb four days already. 18. Now Bethany was near to Jerusalem, at the distance of about fifteen furlongs; 19 and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them concerning their brother’s death.”

For the four days, see on Joh 11:6.— ῾Ημέρας is objective, rather than circumstantial. See on Joh 5:6. The expression: He found, marks the situation as it was according to the information given Him on His arrival. John sets forth the nearness of Bethany to Jerusalem, in order to explain the presence of such a large number of Jews (Joh 11:19). Fifteen stadia make a distance of about forty minutes. This distance is reckoned from Jerusalem as the starting-point, ἐγγὺς τῶν῾Ιεροσολύμων; in this way the following preposition ἀπό is explained. The imperfect was refers to the part played by Bethany in this event which was already remote in time at the moment of John’s writing. It is unnecessary to suppose that John is thinking of the destruction of this village in the Roman war. The turn of expression which is so common among the Greeks, αἱ περὶ Μάρθαν (Joh 11:19), is removed by the Alexandrian reading, but wrongly, even according to Meyer and Tischendorf. It occurs again twice in the New Testament (Act 13:13; Act 21:8). That it was introduced here by the copyists seems to me very questionable.

This form of expression points to Martha and Mary as surrounded by the servants of their household; it implies that the two sisters were in easy circumstances. It is commonly inferred from 1Sa 31:13 and 1Ch 10:12, that the ceremonies of condolence continued for eight days; but the question in those passages is of royal personages. The passages cited by Lightfoot (pp. 1070ff.) also seem to me insufficient to prove this usage. The sequel proves that the term Jews which is here used preserves the unfavorable sense which it has throughout this entire Gospel. Notwithstanding the fact that Martha and Mary were closely connected with these persons, they yet mostly belonged to the party hostile to Jesus. This point is mentioned in order to make prominent the change of feeling which was produced in a certain number of them (Joh 11:36-45).

Frédéric Louis Godet — Commentaries on Luke, John, Romans, and 1 Corinthians — English translation (T&T Clark, Edinburgh, 1870s–1890s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.